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^U 



LIVES 



LORD LYNDHURST 



AND 



LORD BROUGHAM, 



LIVES 



OF 



LORD LYNDHUEST 



AND 



LORD BROUGHAM, 



LORD CHAXCELLOES AND KEEPERS OF THE 
GREAT SEAL OF ENGLAND. 



BY THE LATE 



JOHN LOKD CAMPBELL. LL.D. F.R.S.E, 




LONDON: 
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 

1869. 



The right of Tranxlatinv is resfi-ved. 



i-^ 



V 



LONDON : rRINTKD BT W. CL0WK3 ANI> aOXS, »UKK STBKKT, STAMKORD 9TRKKT. 

ANr> ruAitiNo jRa'S. 



PREFACE BY THE EDITOK. 



The following Memoirs were written as a continu- 
ation of the series of the ' Lives of the Chancellors;' 
but they are necessarily more in the nature of 
sketches than of finished biographies. The author, 
writing during the lifetime of the distinguished men 
whose portraits he was anxious to add to his long 
gallery of the holders of the Great Seal, had not the 
advantage of the letters and journals and contempo- 
rary memoirs which may be pubHshed hereafter, 
supplying valuable materials for future biographers ; 
but, on the other hand, he had his own personal 
recollections and his intimate acquaintance with the 
men and the events of the time to draw from,— an 
advantage which cannot be enjoyed by the laborious 
compiler of a later generation. 

The life of Lord Lyndhurst stops unfinished in the 
year 1858, and that of Lord Brougham is carried 
down only a few months later ; but, as at those dates 
Lord Lyndhurst was eighty-six years old, and Lord 
Brougham in his eighty-first year, the history of 
their careers can scarcely be called incomplete. 
What I have chiefly to regret is tliat tlie summary 
of Lord Brougham's character is wanting, in which 
my father had proposed to give a further account 



VI PREFACE. 



of his efforts for education and literature, and of the 
influence which he exercised over the times in which 
he Hved. 

This volume, written in the short intervals of 
pressing business, also suffers from the disadvantage 
of not having the final corrections and revisions of 
the author's own hand ; but I trust that it may 
nevertheless be considered a not unworthy conclu- 
sion of my father's biographical work, and that it 
may meet with the same favourable reception from 
the public that has been accorded to the former 
volumes. 

Mary Scarlett Campbell. 



14, Cdrzon Street, May Fair, 
December, 18G8. 



CONTENTS 



OF 



THE EIGHTH VOLUME. 



LOED CHANCELLOE LYNDHUEST. 



CHAPTER I. 

HIS EARLY LIFE. 1772-1804, 

Lord Lyndhurst as a subject for biography, Page 1. His family, 3. His birth in 
America, 4. His father comes to England, 5. Lord Lyndhurst at the time 
of his father's death, 7. Qy. when Lord Lyndhurst came to England from 
America, 7. At school, 8. He is in love, and writes verses, 8. He goes to 
Cambridge, 9. His Academical honours, 9. His early devotion to republican 
principles, 10. He is admitted of Lincoln's Inn, but resides in the Temple, 10. 
The author becomes acquainted with him, 11. He attempts to practise as a 
special pleader under the bar, 11. His travels in America, 11. 

CHAPTER IL 

AT THE BAR TILL HE "WAS APPOINTED SOLICITOR GENERAL, 1804-1819. 

He is called to the bar, 7th June, 1804, JEt. 32, 13. His slow progress, 13. He 
becomes a Serjeant-at-Law, 14. His joy at the escape of Napoleon from Elba, 
14. He is counsel for Dr. Watson, accused of high treason, 16. His speech for 
the prisoner, 17. Excites the admiration of Lord Castlereagh, and is caught 
in a-rat-irap baited with Cheshire cheese, 19. He is returned to Parliament for 
a government borough, 21. He becomes a supporter of all the measures of an 
ultra-Tory government, 21. He is made Chief Justice of Chester, 23. And 
Solicitor General, 23. His great success in his new career, 24. Unhappy fate 
of a brother rat, 24. His marriage, 24. His domestic life, 25. 

CHAPTER in. 

SOLICITOR GENERAL ATTORNEY GENERAL MASTER OF THE ROLLS. 1819-1827. 

Trial of the Cato street conspirators, 26. Qy. Should high treason be a capital 
oflence? 26. Arbitrary policy of the government at the conclusion of the reign 
of George III,, 27. Part taken by Lord Lyndhurst, when Solicitor General, in 
support of this arbitrary policy, 28. Death of George III., and arrival of Queen 



VJll CONTENTS. 

Caroline in England, 31. The Queen's trial, 31. Speech of ^Ir. Solicitor Copley 
against the Queen, 32. He still opposes all mitigation of the penal code, and 
all law amendment, 35. He becomes Attorney General, 35. His views upon 
the question of Catholic Emancipation, 36. His speech against the Prisoners' 
Counsel Bill, 36. His mild conduct as public prosecutor while Attorney General. 
37. The part taken by him in Chancery Reform, 37. His practice at the bar 
while Attorney General, 39. His aspiration to the office of Prime Minister, 40. 
And to the character of a man of fashion, 40. He is returned for the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge, 41. His reasons for now declaring himself a strong anti- 
Catholic, 41. He is made Master of the Rolls, 43. His comportment as an 
Equity Judge, 44. He devotes himself to politics, 44. Death of Lord LiverjDOol, 
44. His celebrated speech against Catholic Emancipation, 45. The brief 
from which he spoke, 48. Copley created Lord Chancellor, 49. And Baron- 
Lyndhurst, 49. 

CHAPTER IV. 

LORD CHANCELLOR UNDER CANNING, LORD GODERICH, AND THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON, 

1827-1830. 

Opposite views taken by Lord Eldon and Lord Lyndhurst of humbug, 50. Their 
recipi'ocal courtesy, 50. Lord Lyndhurst's inauguration as Lord Chancellor, 51. 
He takes his seat in the House of Lords, 52. His expedient for disposing of 
Scotch appeals, 52. He supports the Dissenters' Marriage Bill, 53. Reasons 
for his being very quiet while Canning was Minister, 54. Lord Goderich Prime 
Minister, 54. Resignation of Lord Goderich, 56. Formation of the Duke of 
Wellington's administration, 57. Lord Lyndhurst continues Chancellor, 57. 
Lord Lyndhui-st as the Duke of Wellington's Chancellor, 58. He concurs in 
the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, 58. He again opix)ses Catholic 
emancipation, 59. Sudden resolution of the Government that Catholic emanci- 
pation should be granted, GO. Lord Lyndhurst concurs, 60. He delivers the 
royal speech recommending Catholic emancipation, 60. Skirmishes with Lord 
Eldon, 61. Lord Lyndhurst's celebrated speech in favour of Catholic emanci- 
pation, in answer to his celebrated speech against Catholic emancipation, 61. 
Lord Eldon's defence of his own consistency, 64. Death of George IV., 65. 
Mistake of the Duke of Wellington in courting the support of the ultra-Tories 
instead of the moderate Liberals, 66. Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst appoints all 
the puisne Judges of his own authoi'ity, 67. 



CHAPTER V. 

rX)RD CHIEF BARON. JANUARY, 1831 NOVEMBER, 1834. 

Intrigue for continuing Lyndhurst as Chancellor under Lord Grpy, 68. Brougham 
insists u\Hin and obtains the Great Seal, 69. Lyndhurst becomes Lord Chief 
Baron of the Court of Exchequer, 70. His high qualities as a common law 
Judge, 71. Query whether any exception to his ini}mrtiality ? 72. His wond«M-ful 
power of memory exhibited in the case of Small v. Attwood, 72. Chief Baron 
Lyndhurst goes into strong opiK)sition, 73. Tlie Reform Bill in tlie House of 
Commons, 74. Lyndhurst's behaviour on the sudden dissolution of Parliament, 
74, The Reform Bill in the House »)f Lords. 75. Lyndhui'st's speecli against 
it on tlu* second reading, 76. Lyndhursfs claim to consistency, 78. The Reform 
Bill again introduced, 78. Lyndhurst's sp.ech against it on the sci'ond reading, 



CONTEXTS. IX 

79. Great blunder committed by Lyndhurst in the Committee, 80. Crisis on 
the dispute between the King and his Ministers about creating Peers to pass 
the Reform Bill, 81. Lyndhurst sent for by the King to be the head of a new 
Government, 82. The Duke of Wellington, by Lyndhurst's advice, to be 
at the head of the Government, 83. The new Government extinguished, 84. 
Lord Grey restored, 84. Lyndhurst's defence of his conduct in this affair, 85. 
Lyndhurst abandons his opposition to the Reform Bill, 88. Peel constructs the 
Conservative party, 88. Lyndhurst's factious policy, 89. His attack on the 
Solicitor General, 89. He opposes the County Court Bill, 90. His inactivity in 
1834, 92. Indiscreet dismissal of Lord Melbourne by William lY., 93. 



CHAPTER VI. 

liORD CHAN'CELLOR DURING THE 100 DAYS, A>T> EX-CHANCELLOR DURING THE 
ADMINISTRATION OF LORD MELBOURNE. NOVEMBER, 1834 SEPTEMBER, 1841. 

Lyndhurst again Chancellor, 95. Meeting of a new Parliament, 96. Logomachy 
between Lyndhurst and Brougham, 96. Sir R. Peel resigns, 99. Lyndhurst 
again ex-Chancellor, 100. Lord Lyndhurst's bill about incestuous marriages, 
100. Lyndhurst's opposition to the Municipal Reform Bill, 101. His speech to 
support his plan of defeating the bill, 104. He mutilates the bill in committee, 
106. Lord Denman charges Lyndhurst with inconsistency, 106. Lyndhurst's 
defence of himself, 107. Peel takes part against Lyndhurst on the Municipal 
Corix)rations Bill, 108. Lyndhurst vindicates his conduct, 108. Lyndhurst 
irritates Brougham with a representation that Campbell was to be Chancellor, 
109. Lyndhurst in the House of Lords "like a bull in a china shop," 110. 
His renewed attack on the Attorney General for bribery at Stafford, 111. 
Lyndhurst's obsti'uctive policy, 112. Lyndhurst's "Review of the Session," 
113. Lord Melbourne's reply to him, 115. Lyndhurst supports the Prisoners' 
Counsel Bill, answering his former speech against it, 116. Coalition of Lyndhurst 
and Brougham against the Government, 116. Bill to abolish imprisonment 
for debt, 118. Death of "William IV., 119. Accession of Queen Victoria, 
119. Lyndhurst's Review of the Session, 120. His second marriage, 120. Bad 
law laid down in debate by Brougham at the instigation of Lyndhurst, 121. 
Growing unpopularity of the Melbourne Government, 122. Discussion about 
Lyndhurst calling the Irish aliens in blood, language, and religion, 122. 
Resignation of Lord Melbourne, 124. New Government upset by dispute about 
Ladies of the Bedchamber, 124, Uniform penny postage cai-ried, 125. Another 
sessional review by Lord Lyndhurst, 126. Lyndhurst's conduct on the great 
question respecting parliamentary privilege, 128. Lyndhurst's position in 
1841, 130. General Election, 130, 



CHAPTER VH. 

LORD CHANCELLOR UNDER SIR ROBERT PEEL, SEPTEMBER, 1841 JuLY, 1846. 

Lyndhurst again Chancellor, 132. Prorogation, 7th Oct., 132 — Conclusion of first 
session of the new parliament, 132. Lyndhurst's obliging disposition, 133. 
Lyndhurst's fourth Chancellorship, 133. Lyndhurst talis qualis, 134. Paucity 
of his decisions, 135. Speaker Sutton's case, 135. Judicial business of the 
House of Lords, 138. Johnstone v. Bcattie, establishing the narrow-mindedness 



X CONTENTS. 

of English lawyers, 139. The great case as to the necessity for a mass priest to 
celebrate marriage, J41. Daniel O'Connell's case, 143. Lyndhurst as a member 
of Peel's last cabinet, 146. Lyndhurst in the debates of the House of Lords, 147. 
Lyndhurst's aid in amending the law of libel, 150. Disruption of the Church of 
Scotland, 151. Lyndhurst a Liberal, 151. Lord Denman and the law of libel, 
153. Bail in Error Bill thrown out by Lyndhurst, 153. Relation between 
Peel and Lyndhurst, 154. Bail in Error Bill passed by Lyndhurst, 155. Lynd- 
hurst's Charitable Trusts Bill, 155. Jew Bill, 155. Bills thrown out by 
Government in the Commons which Lyndhurst supported in Lords, 156. Lynd- 
hurst's proper treatment of cases of breach of privilege, 157. Q. Whether the 
Sovereign can constitutionally leave the realm without making Lords Justices ? 
157. Sudden political changes in the autumn of 1845, 158. Introduction of 
Sir llqjjert Peel's Bill for Repealing the Corn Laws, 158. Lord Lyndhurst's 
great discovery in jiolitical economy, 159. Rejection of the Charitable Trusts 
Bill by a coalition of Whigs and Protectionists, 159 ; and of the Irish Coercion 
Bill, 160. Death by Accidents Bill: Mode of estimating the damages in case 
of an actual or expectant Chancellor, i60. How the Corn Law Abolition Bill 
passed through the House of Lords, 161. 

CHAPTER VIII. 
OUT or OFFICE. — 1846-1854. 

Lyndhurst's final resignation of office, 162. Lyndhurst's intrigue to bring about a 
reconciliation between the Peelites and the Protectionists, and to turn out the 
Whigs, 163. Lyndhurst resolves never again to meddle with politics, 166. 
Lyndhurst in retirement, 166. Fusion dinner at Stratheden House, 167. His 
country house, 167. His Life in London, 168. Lyndhurst again plunges into 
politics, and becomes a Protectionist, 168. Lyndhurst's explosion upon the 
Canada Compensation Bill, 169. Perpetual peace between Lord Lyndhurst and 
Lord Campbell, 171. Lyndhurst begins a new political career, 172. Lyndhurst 
very factious in the Session of 1851, 172. He is still more factious in the 
beginning of 1852, 174. He becomes protector of Lord Derby's Government, 

175. His eulogy on Lord St. Leonards, 175. His Bill to do away with the 
l^enalties of praemunire, 176. His celebrated speech on Baron de Bode's case, 

176. Blunders committed by Lord Derby's Government, 178. Lyndhurst's 
patriotic conduct on the downfall of Lord Derby, 179. Lyndhurst's denunci- 
ation of the outrageous conduct of Russia, 179. Lyndhurst's effort for the 
complete emancipation of the Jews, ISO. Laudable attention now given by 
Lyndhurst to bills for amending the law, 182. His judgment in the groat 
Bridgewater case, 183. 

CHAPl'ER IX. 

1854 TO Tin; altimn or 1858. 

Session of 1854, 188. Russian War, 188. Ho opjiosos my Eoroign Intoroourso Bill, 
188. His residence in Franco, 190. Lord l^ilmorston Prime jMinistcr, 190. 
Lyndhurst's 8i)occh against Prussia, 190. LyniMuirst champion of the Jews, 
192. Lyndhurst at Paris, 192. The Wcnsleydale life ix'orago, 192. Appellate 
jurisdiction of the FiOrds, 193. Lyndhurst champion of the rights of women, 
194. .lew Bill again rejected, 190. J-yndluust studios (ho Fathers, 197. 



CONTENTS. XI 

Session in spring of 1857, 197. Lyndhurst on the China question, 197. New- 
Parliament, 198. Lyndhurst on divorce, 199. Lyndhurst again supports the 
Jew Bill without success, 199. His reckless conduct with respect to the case 
of Sheddon v. Patrick, 200. Obscene Publications Bill, 201. Palmerston's 
approaching fall, 202. Consequences of the plot to assassinate Louis Napoleon, 

202. Diplomatic relations renewed between Lords Lyndhurst and Camx^bell, 

203. Law as to aliens residing in England, 203, Final emancipation of the 
Jews, 204. Character of Lord Lyndhurst, 207. His person, 209. His happi- 
ness in domestic life, 209. 



LOED CHANCELLOR BROUGHAM. 

CHAPTER L 

HIS EARLY LIFE IX SCOTLAND, 1778-1805. 

Qualifications and disqualifications of the Biographer to ^vrite this Memoir, 213. 
"Brougham of that ilk," 214. Brougham's grandfather, 218. Father, 219. 
Marriage of his father and mother, 219. Birth of Lord Brougham, 220. His 
precocious infancy, 222. Talents and virtues of his mother, 222. His school 
education, 223. At College, 226. His papers sent to the Royal Society on 
Light, 227. On Porisms, 228. His great success in debating societies, 229- 
His irregularities, 229. At the Caledonian Hunt, 230. He chooses the profes- 
sion of an Advocate, 232. His Law studies, 233. He founds the " Academy of 
Physics," 234. His examinations and thesis before his call to the Bar, 235. 
He resolves to make his fortune by defending pauper prisoners at the Assizes, 
238. His appearance before Lord Eskgrove at Jedburgh, 238. The Judge 
charged, 238. Brougham's defence of a sheep-stealer, 239. Q. Whether half- 
hoots are hoots'? 240. How far ebi-iety may be a defence for a husband beating 
his wife, 240. Brougham's eccentricities, 241. His book on the Colonial Policy 
of European Nations, 242. ' The Edinburgh Review,' 244. Brougham's contri- 
butions to the first number, 245. ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' 246. 
Brougham's critique on Professor Young, 247. 

CHAPTER II. 

FUOM Ills llEMOVAL TO ENGLAND TO THE DEATH OF GEORGE III., 1805-1820. 

He resolves to transfer himself to the English bar, 249. He is entered of Lincoln's 
Inn, 249. He comes to reside in London, 250. His great success in society in 
London, 251. Accession to power of " All the Talents," 253. Brougham's visit 
to Portugal, 253. His efforts for the Whigs when they were turned out, 254. 
He is called tg the bar, 255. His bad success at first, 255, Goes the Northern 
Circuit, 255. Loi'd Eldon's misnomer, 256. Brougham and Campbell first 
upon the stage together, 257. Brougham's resentment against the Whigs for 
not bringing him into Parliament, 258. He becomes member for Camelford, 
259. His month of silence, 260. His maiden spcccli. 261. His claims to tlir 



XU CONTKNTS. 

leadership of tlie Opposition, 262. He devotes himself to Negro slavery, 
264. His crusade against the Orders in Council, 267. His victory, 271. 
Transient glimpse of office to the Whigs, 271. He is excluded from Parliament, 
272. His unsuccessful candidature for Liverpool, 272. His bad opinion of the 
Whig leadei's, 273. His first great speech at the bar on " Military Flogging," 
274. The same publication held innocent at Westminster, and a libel in 
Lincolnshire, 278. Brougham languishes M'hen out of Parliament, 280. Origin 
of his connection with Caroline of Brunswick, 281. He is restored to the 
House of Commons, 282. His fecundity in debate, 283. His solution of 
the evil with which he thought the country was afflicted from the low 
price of corn, 284. His opposition to the " Six Acts," 283. His exposition of 
the tactics of a rival orator, 286. Query as to the qualities by which the Scots 
in leaving their own country succeed in life ? 287. Best smelling-bottle for a 
parliamentary antiquary, 287. 

CHAPTER in. 

ATTORNEY-GENERAL TO QUEEN CAROLINE. 1820-1821. 

Death of George HI., and position of Brougham at commencement of new reign, 
289. Unhappy career of Caroline of Brunswick, 290. Brougham becomes 
her legal adviser, 291. The Princess Charlotte of Wales, 292. Her elope- 
ment, 292. Brougham's advice to her, 293. Object of the Regent to drive 
Cai'oline abroad, 294. Brougham's advice to her to remain in England, 

294. Her conduct in foreign countries, 295. Brougham's offer without her 
authority that she should never return to England nor take the title of Queen, 

295. Caroline becomes Queen on the death of George HL, 296. She appoints 
Brougham her Attorney General, 297. Brougham's mysterious conduct in not 
communicating to the Queen a proposal intrusted to him on her behalf, 297. 
Negotiations between the King and Queen, 298. Conference at St. Omei-'s, 300. 
The Queen comes to England to claim her rights, 301. She is suspicious of 
Brougham, 301. The Green Bag, 302. Brougham acts openly, boldly, and 
skilfully, in defence of the Queen, 303. His threats of retaliation against the 
King, 304. Diplomacy resorted to, 306. Rupture of the negotiation, 307. 
Bill of Pains and Penalties introduced, 308. Preliminary proceedings respecting 
it, 308. Queen's trial, 311. Brougham's great speech for the Queen. 313. Bill 
ruined by a split among the Bishops, 321. Query Brougham's private opinion 
as to the Queen's guilt? 322. Brougham's great popularity from his defence of 
the Queen, 324. Sudden increase to his practice at the bar, 324. Queen's 
claim to be crowned, 325. Queen's death, 327. 



CHAPTER IV. 

IKO.M Tin: DEATH OF QUEEN CAUOLINE TILL HE BECO.MES LOUn CH.VNCELLOU, 

1S21-1S30. 

Brougham obliged to doff his silk gown and to don his sltijf, 328. His si>ecch 
ngninst Bincow, 328. The best speech he over delivered against the clergy of 
Durlinm and Dr. PhiliKitts, 330. Rapid review of the tivo years which inter- 
vened between the Quet^n's death and the formation of Canning's Government, 
337. Brougham's love of protection and horror of free-trnde, 338. ISIotion in 
the House of Commons that Brougham and Canning should bo taken into 



CONTENTS. Xm 

custody, 339. Abolition of duelling, 342. Brougham's speech on the case of 
Smith the Missionary, by himself considered his best, 344. Brougham's attacks 
on Lord Eldon, 345. Brougham on the elevation of Lord Gifford, 347. Change 
caused by the sudden death of Lord Liverpool, 348. Canning's proposal to coalesce 
with the TThigs, 349. Warmly supported by Brougham, 349, He refuses the office 
of Chief Baron of the Exchequer, 350. He obtains a silk gown, and "takes his 
place within the bar accordingly," 350. Brougham's defence of himself for 
"going over," 351. Coalition against Canning in the House of Lords, 353. 
Brougham's brilliant success for a time on the Northern Circuit, 354. His 
coronation as Henry IX., 354. Death of Canning, 355. Loi'd Goderich's 
Government, 355. The Duke of Wellington's Government, 355. Brougham's 
struggle for the lead on the Opposition side, 356. Golden rule for getting on 
well in society, 356. Brougham tries to alarm the nation about the dangerous 
power now enjoyed by the Duke of Wellington, 357. Brougham's celebrated 
six hours' speech on Law Reform, 357. Brougham as a legislator, 360. 
Brougham's contests for the county of Westmorland, 360. Catholic Emanci- 
pation carried, 361. Cessation of hostilities during the first Session of 1830, 
362. State of parties, 363. George IV. moribund, 364. Accession of William 
IV., 364. Effect in England of the Revolution in France in July, 1830, 364. 
Brougham elected member for the county of York, 365. He is mounted on a 
charger as Knight of the Shire, 366. Condition of the Duke of Wellington as 
Minister, 367. He vainly attempts to please the ultra-Tories, 368. He insults 
the Liberals, 368. Brougham declares war against the attorneys, 369. Forma- 
tion of Lord Grey's Government, 370. What was to be done with Brougham ? 370. 
His explosion in the House of Commons, 371. Sensation produced by it, 372. 
Conjecture as to the manner in which he obtained the Great Seal, 373. 

CHAPTER V. 

I.0RD CHANCFXLOU. NOVEMBER, 1830, TO NOVEMBER, 1834. 

He takes his seat on the woolsack, 375. He becomes Baron Brougham and Vaux, 
376. He is made a peer, 377. His claim of a female barony, 377. Attack 
upon him in the House of Commons, 377. Defence of him by Macintosh and 
Macaulay, 378. His maiden speech in the House of Lords, 379. Brougham's 
own astonishment at finding himself Chancellor, 380. His fitness for the 
office, 380. His high plans and aspirations, 382. Concoction of the Reform 
Bill, 383. The Chancellor's first attempt at legislation, 384. Lyndhurst 
made Chief Baron of the Exchequer, 384. Chancery Reform, 386. Reform 
Bill launched, 388. The King's Guard forced by the Lord Chancellor, 389. 
Sudden dissolution of Parliament, 391. Fabulous statement upon Lord 
Brougham's authority of his having assumed the functions of royalty, 392. 
The King's early sincerity and zeal in the cause of Reform, 394. Part 
acted by the Lord Chancellor in the prorogation scene, 395. The Lord 
Chancellor's vindication, 397. Lord Brougham's celebrated speech on the 
second reading of the Reform Bill, 397. Question as to the creation of 
peers to carry the Reform Bill, 399. His attack on Lord Wynford, 400. 
The Chancellor at the Coronation, 404. The second Reform Bill in the 
House of Lords, 405. Great blunder committed by Lord Lyndhurst, 406. 
Resignation of the Whig Ministers, 406. The Chancellor's employment during 
the interregnum, 407. Reform finally carried, and Parliament prorogued, 
410. Dispute botweon the King and his Ministers about dissolving the last 



XIV CONTENTS. 

unreformed Parliament, 411. The King yields, 412. Brougham in the 
zenith of his greatness, 412. His coming fall, 414. Elections for the first 
Reformed Parliament, 414. Blunders of the Whigs, 415. Irish Coercion 
Bill, 415. The Chancellor's legislative measures, 417. Altercation between 
the Chancellor and the late Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, 417. Irish 
Temporalities Bill, and Slavery Abolition Bill, 419. Brougham in the 
judicial business of the House of Lords, 421. In the Court of Chancery, 
421, Brougham's philosophical pursuits while Chancellor, 422. His dispute 
with Home, the Attorney General, 424. Brougham's kindness to Sir John 
Campbell when thrown out at Dudley, 426. How he wrote a speech for 
the Solicitor General, 427. Secession of Stanley and three other Cabinet 
Ministers, 429. Brougham on application of Church property, 429. Resigna- 
tion of Lord Grey, 430. Brougham's refusal of the Premiership, 433. Lord 
Melbourne Premier, 433. Brougham " Viceroy over him," 435. Fantastic 
tricks of the Lord Chancellor, 436. The Chancellor at the Fish dinner, 438. 
Poor-Law Bill and Central Criminal Court Bill, 439. Brougham's quarrel with 
the ' Times,' 440. Sir John Campbell's eulogy on the Lord Chancellor in the 
House of Commons, 444. Brougham at the prorogation, 446. His '• Progress " 
in Scotland, 446. The Grej- Festival, 454. Brougham seeks to fortify his 
position as Chancellor by making Pepys blaster of the Rolls, 458. Dismissal of 
the Whig Ministers, 458. Brougham's charge against Queen Adelaide, 458. 
Brougham's manner of returning the Great Seal to the King, 460. His offer to 
become Chief Baron of the Exchequer, 460. 



CHAPTER YI. 

" THE HUNDBED DAYS " TO THE FINAL RESIGNATION OF LORD MELBOIRNF. 
1834-1841. 

On a dissolution of Parliament, majority returned for the Whigs, and Brougham's 
exultation, 463. His speech against the new Government, 464. Lord Melbourne 
restored. What was to be done with Brougham ? 466. Brougham duped, and 
the Great Seal put into Commission, 467. Brougham Lord Protector, 468. 
Lyndhurst's factious opposition, 469. Brougham's multifarious labours in 
Parliament, 470. His complaints of the abuse in the Press. 472. And in 
the House of Commons, 472, His confident expectation of being restored to 
office, 473. Resolution of the Cabinet to abandon Brougham, to make Pepys 
Chancellor, and Bickersteth Master of the Rolls. 475. Opinion that Brougham 
was ill-used by Melbourne and liis old colleagues, 476. Effect on Brougham 
of the ill-usage he suffered, 477. Bickersteth a failure, 477. Brougham's 
recovery, 478. Lord Cottenham Chancellor, 479. Approaching death of 
William IV., 480. Accession of Queen Victoria. Brougham's panegyric upon 
his late royal master, 481. Melbourne continues Prime Minister, 482. 
Brougham's ascendancy in the House of Lords, 483. He is violent against the 
Government and the Court, 483. Query Whether he was given to (jlozing ? 
484. He co-operates with the Tories, pretending to he Radical, 488. Canada 
Bill, 489. lie denounces the Whigs as having hocomc courfierfi, 490. His labours 
witli his pen, 493. His ' Political Philosophy,' and the bankruptcy of the Fseful 
Knowledge Society, 493. The success of his ' Sketches of Statesmen,' 494. Minis- 
terial crisis, 495. His delight at supposed fall of Mellxnirne, 495. Mellxuirne 
restored, 496. Brougham on the Be<l<'hamber ladies, 496. He complains of a 



CONTENTS. XY 

breach of privilege in being libelled, 497. His grand motion as Leader of the 
Tory Ofposition, 498. His victory is fruitless, 502. Brougham assists Lyndhurst 
in the Keview of the Session, 504. Report of his death, 505. Brougham 
suspected of suicide, 509. Announcement of the Queen's marriage, 511^ 
Privilege question on right of Houses of Parliament to authorise publication of 
criminatory matter, 512. Part taken by Brougham, 512. Dispute settled by a 
bill establishing the disputed right, 5 14. Brougham's chateau in France, 514. 
Session of 1841, 515. Vote of want of confidence carried against Government 
in the House of Commons, 517. Dissolution of Parliament, 517. Return of 
Conservative majority, 517. Brougham refuses to rejoin the Whigs, and to 
"let bygones be bygones," 518. Brougham tramples on the dead body of 
Melbourne, 518. Sir R. Peel Prime Minister, 519. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FROM THE RESIGNATION OF LORD MELBOURNE TO THE RESIGNATION OF 
SIR ROBERT PEEL. 1841-1846. 

Brougham, professing to be " in the front of the OpiDosition," is Advocate General 
of the new Government, 520. Brougham's reception of Lord Campbell in the 
House of Lords, 522. Brougham contented and happy, 522. Brougham on the 
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 523. Creation of an Earl by 
Brougham, 524. Brougham's locality in the House of Lords, 525. Brougham's 
logomachies with Lord Campbell, 526. Brougham's consistency on the Income- 
tax, 526. Brougham petted by the Tory peers, 527. Prosperity of Sir R. 
Peel's Government, 528. Brougham trumpeter to the Tories, 529. Part taken 
by Brougham on O'Connell's case, 530. Brougham's imputation against others 
acting judicially, that they were actuated by party motives, 531. His valuable 
assistance in carrying Lord Campbell's bills, 531. How a public man may be 
written down, 531. Disruption of the Church of Scotland, 531. Brougham's 
scheme of becoming President of the Judicial Committee, 532. Interview at 
Boulogne between Brougham and his biographer, 536. Session of 1845, 537. 
Brougham performs to empty boxes, 537. Brougham at the Court of Queen 
Victoria, 538. Sudden turn of the Wheel of Fortune, 538. Brougham's unhap- 
piness on the success of the ' Lives of the Chancellors,' 539. Brougham's denun- 
ciation of the Corn Law League, 540. His speculations with respect to Peel's 
remaining in office, 541. Factious coalition of Whigs and Protectionists against 
the Government bill for the Administration of Charities, 541. The Corn-law 
Abolition Bill in the House of Lords, 542. Brougham's e'loge of Sir R. Peel, 
542. Peel's approaching end, 543. Irish Coercion Bill, Peel's coup de grace, 
544. Restoration of the Whigs, 545. Close of the Session of 1846, 545. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

1847—1852. 

Brougham a leader of Opposition, 546. Combined attack of Brougham and 
Stanley on the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 546. Dinner to the 
Heads of Factions at Stratheden House, 547. Brougham's failure in at- 
tempting to imitate Lyndhurst in a review of the Session, 547. Brougham 
remains through the autumn in England, 548. Intrigues in consequence of 
the dangerous illness of the Lord Chancellor, 548. State of France, 550- 



XVI CONTENTS. 

Brougham tries to become a naturalised French citizen and a Deputy to the 
National Assembly, 550. Con-espondence with the Minister of Justice, 552. 
Citizen Brougham in the House of Lords, 554. Articles on Citizen Brougham 
in the French and English newspapers, 555. Brougham supports the Whig 
Government, 556. My visit to him at Brougham Hall, 557. Brougham 
enlists with the Protectionists, 558. He resists the repeal of the Navigation 
Laws, 558. Defeat of Brougham and the Protectionists, 560. Brougham 
resolves to make me Chief Justice of England, 561. Brougham devotes himself 
to science, 563. His lecture on light to the French Institute, 563. Brougham's 
advice to me on my becoming a Judge, 564. Resignation of Lord Cottenham, 
565. Brougham invests himself with the functions of Chancellor in the House of 
Lords, 566. Brougham declines to lay down his functions on the appointment 
of Lord Truro as Chancellor, 567. His judicial performances in the absence of 
the Lord Chancellor, 568. Attacks upon him in the Press, 568. He complains 
of breach of privilege for a libel upon him, 568. All his schemes for recovering 
the Great Seal for ever ruined, 570. Papal aggression, 570. Brougham's 
quarrel with Lord Truro, 571. Brougham gives up the great game of politics, 
572. My visit to the Chateau Eleanor Louise, 573. Factious proceedings of 
Lords Brougham and Lyndhurst, 573. Fall of Lord John Russell, 574. Regret 
of Lord Brougham, 574. Brougham under Lord St. Leonards as Chancellor, 
574. Overthrow of the Derbyites, 574. Brougham favours the coalition be- 
tween the Whigs and Peelites, 575. 

CHAPTER IX. 

1852— April, 1859. 

Sketch of the years 1852 to 1856, 576. Brougham supports Lord Aberdeen, 577. 
The appellate jurisdiction of the Lords, 578. Courts of reconciliation, 579. The 
Criminal Code, 579. Meeting with Brougham in Paris, Oct., 1854, 580. 
Conduct of the war, 581. Palmerston Prime Minister, 581. Brougham sup- 
ports the new Government, 581. Attack upon the appellate jurisdiction of the 
Lords, 582. Parke made a peer for life, 582. Brougham's able opix)sition to 
life peerages, 583. Violent attacks on Brougham as an appellate judge, 583. 
Farewell for the present of my ' Life of Lord Brougham,' 583. From 13tli 
April, 1856, to 13th April, 1859, 584. 



PosTsciiirr BY Tin; EniTou Page 591 

Appendix .. 593 



LIVES 



LOED CHANCELLOES OF ENGLAND 



LOKD CHANCELLOR LTNDHUEST. 



CHAPTEK I. 

HIS EAELY LIFE. 1772-1804. 



j\Iany of my contemporaries liaye sunk into tlie tomb, but CHAP. 
Lord Lyndhurst, considerably my senior, survive^ in the full ■'"• 



enjoyment of bis intellectual powers.* He is a noble subject y^^^.^ ^ j_ 
for biography, from bis brilliant talents — from the striking ^^^rst as a 
vicissitudes of bis career — from the antagonistic qualities biography! 
which he displayed— and from the quick alternation of warm 
praise and severe censure which must, in fairness, be pro- 
nounced upon his actions. Having known him familiarly 
above half a century both in public and in private life, I ought 
to be able to do him justice ; and notwithstanding a hankering 
kindness for him with all his faults, I think I can command 
sufficient impartiality to save me in this Memoir from con- 
founding the distinctions of right and wrong. All rivalry 
between us has long ceased, and I am sure I can never be 
induced to disparage or to blame him from resentment or 
envy. 

Half in jest, half in earnest, he has prayed that in writing 
his Life I would be merciful to him ; and I have promised 
that if he would supply me with materials I would do my 

* This Memoir ^Yas begun in March, 1853. — Ed, 
VOL. VIII. B 



: KEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP. Ijest for him as far as mj conscience would allow. He has 

' replied, *' Materials you shall have none from me; I have 

already burnt every letter and paper which could be useful 

to my biographer, therefore he is at liberty to follow his own 

inclination." * 

When I have proceeded a little way, Law Keports, Parlia- 
mentary Debates, and my own testimony, will furnish me with 
abundant materials for my narrative. But, in starting, I have 
only uncertain rumours as to the origin of Lord Lyndhurst and 
his infancy. I thought that Debrett's, Lodge's, or Burke's 
' Peerage,' would at least have given me a pedigree, which I 
might have adopted ; but instead of telling us how the first 
Copley, under the name of De Couple, came in with the Con- 
queror, and tracing the Chancellor up to him, they do not even 
mention the Chancellor's father, for they all begin with his own 
birth on the 21st of May, 1772, as if he had then sprung from 
the earth, without even telling us what region of the world 
witnessed this wonderful vegetation. The account of himself 
which he sent to these genealogists seems to disclose a weak- 
ness, — that he was very unreasonably ashamed of his family. 
Although nit descended from De Veres, Bohuns, or Bigods, he 
might have been proud to be the son of an eminent artist, 
whose pencil had worthily commemorated some of the most 
striking events in English history: Charles I. ordering the 
arrest of the five IMembers in the House of Commons ; the 
Siege of Gibraltar; the Victory of Wolfe, and the Death of 
Chatham. Lord Lyndhurst, when in the zenith of his power, 
was much hurt by a speech delivered at a pubhc dinner by 
the Honourable James Stuart Wortley, now Recorder of 
London, himself of royal descent. In demonstrating the 
superior good qualities of the Tories over the rival party, he 
dwelt particularly on the alleged aristocratic exclusiveness of 
the Whigs, by Mhich, when they were in power, Burke and 
Sheridan had been banished from the Cabinet; "whereas," 

* Lord Lyndhurst has since nskcd mc, "How nre you exciting on with my 
Life?" and Ims oftcrcd to correct the proof sheets, nddiiig, "I can surely judge 
better tlian any one of the accuracy of your stjitements." This reminds me 
of a mnrriod hidy, against wliom a scandalous story had got abroad, and wlio 
said to a friend of mine, " You have my authority positively to contradict it ; 
and Biu-ely I ought to know whether it be true or false." 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHURST. 

said he, " we gloiy in having as our leader in the one House CHAP. 
the son of a cotton-spinner, and in the other the son of a ' 



painter." Offence might have been justly taken at the ex- 
pression by which the art of the Chancellor's father was thus 
referred to — intimating to a person before unacquainted with 
the truth, that the Chancellor's sire was' an operative, or, at 
any rate, not better than a sign-painter. 

I have not been able to trace this line of the Copleys farther His family, 
back than the Chancellor's gTandfather, who, being an English- 
man by birth, married in Ireland Mary Singleton, and went 
with her to Boston, in America. Here was born John Singleton 
Copley, the Chancellor's father. Ireland has been claimed as 
the birthplace of the distinguished artist ; but there seems to 
be no doubt that before he saw the light his parents had emi- 
grated to the new world. In the year 1782, when he had 
acquired great reputation by his pencil in London, he was 
thus addressed by an American patriot at Boston : — "I trust 
amidst this blaze of prosperity that you don't forget your dear 
native country, and the cause it is engaged in, which I know 
lay once near your heart, and I trust does so still." So, when 
he sent copies of the print of his painting of * The Death of 
Chatham ' to Washington and Adams, the one replied, " This 
work, highly valuable in itself, is rendered more estimable in 
my eye when I remember that America gave birth to the 
celebrated artist who produced it ;" and the other, " I shall 
preserve my copy both as a token of your friendship and as 
-an indubitable proof of American genius." * There cannot 
be conceived a more unpromising soil for the cultivation of 
the fine arts than the retreat of the " Pilgrim Fathers," whose 
descendants had made little progress in wealth, and still fos- 
tered a puritanical distaste for all that was elegant or imagi- 
native. Yet almost at the same hour America produced, 
amid her deserts and her trading villages, two eminent 
painters, West and Copley, who, unknown to each other, 
were schooling themselves in the rudiments of art, attempting 
portraits of their friends one day, and historical compositions 
the next, studying nature from the "naked Apollos of the 
wilderness," as some one called the Indian chiefs, and making 

* Cunningham's ' Lives of British Painters,' vol. v., p. 174. 

B 2 



EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, experiments on all manner of colours, primitive and com- 

pound ; in short, groping through inspiration the right way to 

eminence and fame. West's progress was more rapid, and 
from the patronage of George III. he gained the higher posi- 
tion ; but Copley was more favoured by the public, and his 
productions are in much greater estimation than those of his 
countryman, once much prized for their skilful drawing and 
academical correctness. While Copley continued at Boston, 
he not only was considered a prodigy — making an income of 
300^. a-year by drawing portraits at fourteen guineas a-piece — 
but he sent over paintings for the Exhibition of the Koyal 
Academy in Somerset House. Some of these attracted con- 
siderable notice, and he was strongly advised to push his 
fortune on this side the Atlantic. To one of these counsellors 
he answered : " I would gladly exchange my situation for the 
serene climate of Italy, or even that of England ; but what 
would be the advantage of seeking improvement at such an 
outlay of time and money ? I am now in as good business as 
the poverty of this place will admit. I make as much as if I 
were a Kaphael or a Coreggio, and three hundred guineas 
a-year, my present income, is equal to nine hundred a-year in 
London. With regard to reputation, you are sensible that 
fame cannot be durable where pictures are confined to sitting- 
rooms, and regarded only for the resemblance they bear to 
their originals. Were I sure of doing as well in Europe as 
here, I would not hesitate a moment in my choice ; but I 
might in the experiment waste a thousand pounds and two 
years of my time, and have to return baffled to America. 
My ambition whispers me to run this risk, and I think th(? 
time draws nigh that must determine my future fortune." 
According to the precept of Sir Joshua Keynolds to artists, 
he had continued a bachelor till the meridian of life ; but 
about the year 1770 ho entered the married state, uniting 
himself to a young lady said to bo of high respectability and 
of great intellectual accomplislimcnts. I have not been able 
to discover her maiden name, or the exact time of their union. 
But it rests on the most undoubted authority that on the 
21st day of IMay, 1772, they were made happy by the birth 
of their first-born sou, named John Singleton, after his 



Ilis birth in 
America. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. I 

father, and destined to be four times Lord High Chancellor CHAP 
of Great Britain. ' 

Before entering upon the career of the son, the reader may 
wish to be informed of the subsequent adventures of the sire. 
In the beginning of the year 1774 he set sail from Boston for His father 
England, dreading that, if he deferred the voyage longer, ^^i^^^!^ 
it might be effectually prevented by hostilities between the 
mother-country and her colonies. But he by no means then 
resolved on seeking a new domicile, for he left his mother, his 
wife, and his child, with all his unsold pictures and his house- 
hold gods, behind him; in the hope that, having had a 
glimpse of Europe, in all probability he should rejoin them, 
and find all disputes amicably adjusted. A final separation 
between the two countries was then as little thought of as 
that the earth should be severed from the solar system. After 
a short stay in London, where he said "he met wdth few 
friends and many advisers,'^ he impatiently set off for Rome, 
the object of his aspiring wishes since he first drew a likeness 
on the wall with a piece of chalk. There is no account of the 
impression made upon him by the wonders of the Vaticau, 
but in May, 1775, we find him thus writing to an acquaint- 
ance in London : — 

" Having seen the Eoman school and the wonderful efforts of 
genius exhibited by Grecian artists, I now wish to see the Vene- 
tian and Flemish schools. There is a kind of luxury in seeing 
as well as there is in eating and drinking; the more we indulge 
the less are we to be restrained, and indulgence in art I think 
innocent and laudable. Art is in its utmost perfection here ; the 
Apollo, the Laocoon, &c., leave nothing for the human mind to 
wish for. More cannot be effected by the genius of man than 
what is happily combined in those miracles of the chisel." 

This artistic tour gave a new impulse to Copley's genius, 
and strengthened his confidence in his ow^n powers. On his 
return to London, in the end of the year 1775, he resolved 
boldly to establish himself as an artist in this great metro- 
polis, trusting to portrait-painting as his steady means of sub- 
sistence, but not despairing of being able to enhance his fame 
by original compositions commemorating interesting events in 
English liistory. These, he wisely thought, offered him a 



I. 



EEIG:N" of GEORGE III. 

CHAP, fairer hope than ^ Holy Families,' ' Last Suppers/ or ' Cru- 
cifixions,' to which his countryman West was deyoting him- 
self. Accordingly he set up his easel 25, George Street, 
Hanover Square, the very house which his son, when Lord 
High Chancellor, inhabited, and still — an octogenarian Ex- 
Cliancellor — inhabits. 

His success fully justified his anticipations, and his * Death 
of Chatham,' though liable to severe criticism in some of its 
details, being received with unbounded applause, placed him 
in the first rank of his profession. He was elected a Koyal 
Academician, and lived much respected by his brother 
artists and by the public. Once, and once only, he figured 
as a party in a court of justice. A rich citizen of Bristol 
came to Copley, and had himself^ his wife, and seven children, 
all included in a family piece. "It wants but one thing," 
said the head of the family, " and that is the portrait of my 
first wife, for this one is my second." '*' But," said the artist, 
" she is dead, you know. Sir : vfhat can I do ? She is only to 
be admitted as an angel." '^Oh no, not at all," answered the 
other ; " she must come in as a woman ; no angels for me." 
The portrait of the first Avife was added ; but, while the picture 
remained in the studio, the citizen returned with a stranger 
lady on his arm. " I must have another cast of your hand, 
Mr. Copley," said he ; " an accident befell my second wife ; 
this lady is my third, and she is come to have her likeness 
included in the family group." The painter complied, and 
the husband looked with a glance of satisfaction on his three 
spouses. Not so the living lady. On this occasion she 
remained silent, but afterwards she called by herself and 
remonstrated. '* Never was such a thing heard of: it was 
unchristian that a man should have three wives at once ; her 
character would be gone if she submitted to it ; out her pre- 
decessors must go." And she solemnly declared that she had 
her husband's full authority for the alteration. The artist 
yielded, and immediately sent the picture homo, that he 
might liavc no more trouble Avith it. But the enraged triga- 
mist, without sending it back, refused to pay for it, and, 
Ijeing sued, set up as a defence tliat it was not according 
to order. The Judge before whom th(^ action was tried loll 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUEST. 

it to the Jury, *^ whether they did not believe that, under CHAP, 
the circumstances, the third wife had the authority of the ' 



defendant for directing the ejection of the first and second 
wife ;" and the plaintiff recoyered a verdict for the full amount 
of his demand. 

Sir Thomas Lawrence arose, to supersede for a time all 
rivals in portrait-painting, although his reputation has since 
sadly declined: but Copley, by successive historical pieces, 
continued to maintain a high position as an artist till his 
death, in the year 1815. 

At this period his son, the subject of the present memoir, ^^^'^ ^J^^^^- 
was in the meridian of life, and, notwithstanding extra- the time of 
ordinary talents and acquirements, had gained little public ^'^fetiiers 
distinction. His mother lived to see him in the robes of Lord 
Chancellor, but his father could hardly have hoped that he 
would ever reach so high as the dignity of a puisne judge. 

We must now trace his career, and analyse the " mixture of 
good and evil arts " by which he reached the lofty eminence 
he still commands. 

When Copley, the father, sailed from America, as I have Qy- when 
related, his wife and son were left behind him, and I have not hullt came 
been able to ascertain the exact time when they followed him i^ England 
to England. Some have said that the youth continued to rica. 
reside at Boston, after the treaty of peace recognising the 
independence of America, so long as indelibly to fix upon 
himself the stamp of American citizenship. When Lord 
Chancellor Lyndhurst indiscreetly denounced the Lish as 
" aliens in blood, language, and religion," Daniel O'Connell 
retorted that the Chancellor himself was an alien, and liable 
to be reclaimed as a refugee Yankee. But there is clearly no 
foundation for this surmise; his father must be considered 
domiciled in Englaud when the treaty of independence was 
concluded ; the Chancellor himself was certainly transferred * 
to this country while in statu pupillari ; and he never again 
set foot on American soil except as a tourist.* 

* I have heard him express himself in terms of affection for his native land, 
and speak proudly of distinguished Americans as his countrymen. In early 
life, when there seemed so little prospect of his burning ambition ever being 
gratified, lie must liave regretted that he had losrt the chance of Ijecouiing 
President of the United States. 



verses. 



8 EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP. In tlie year 1786, young Copley appears to have been at 
' school at Clapham, in tlio county of Surrey, and precociously 
At school, both a lover and a poet. The author .of 'Literary Lawyers/ 
after noticing Sir William Jones, and a few others, from the 
short list of those who have been celebrated both in West- 
minster Hall and Paternoster Kow, thus proceeds : — 

" Lord Lyndhurst, too, has wooed the Muse. While he was at 
a school kept by a Mr. Franks, a circumstance occurred which 
will serve to show how early the ardent temperament and ready 
talent, which have distinguished his public career, developed 
itself in this remarkable man. At Clapham there was a young 
ladies' school, which w^as attended by the same dancing-master 
as that employed at Mr. Franks' ; and, previous to his annual 
ball, the two schools used frequently to meet together for the 
purpose of practising. At one of these agreeable reunions young 
Coplej^ then not more than fourteen years of age, was smitten 
He is in love with the charms of a beautiful girl ; and at their next meeting 
and writes slipped into her hand a letter containing a locket with his hair, 
and a copy of verses of which the following is a transcript. 
They were entitled : — 

' Verses addressed hy J. Copley to tlte most amiable . 

' Thy fatal shafts unerring move, 
I bow before thine altar, love ; 
I feel thy soft resistless flame 
Glide swift through all my vital frame ; 
For while I gaze my bosom glows, 
My blood in tides impetuous flows ; 
Hope, fear, and joy alternate roll. 
And floods of transport whelm my soul. 
]My faltering tongue attempts in vain 
In soothing murmurs to comi)lain ; 
IMy tongue some secret magic ties, 
My murmurs sink in broken sighs ; 
Condemned to nurse eternal care, 
And ever drop the silent tear, 
Unheard I mourn, unheard I sigh. 
Unfriended live, unpitied die.' 

' I beg you will d(j mo the honour to accept of the trifle which 
accompanies it, and you will oblige 

' Your affectionate admirer, 

* J. S. CorLEv, J UN. 
' r.S. — rray cxcufc^e the writing.' 

"It is only necessary to add that the lady to whom these 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUKST. 



verses were addressed still survives, and retains in lier possession CHAP, 
both tlie letter and its contents." 



Tlie lines, closely imitated from a well known translation 
of Horace, I suspect to have been cojjied for the occasion 
from a scrap book ; for the professed lover has never since 
been known to versify. 

From Clapham he was removed to a school at Chiswick. 
Here he was taught first by the Eev. Mr. Crawford, after- 
wards by the Kev. Dr. Home, father of the present Sir 
William Home, once my colleague as law officer of the 
Crown, now a Master in Chancery. I have not been able to 
obtain any authentic account of young Copley's proficiency 
or demeanour at this school ; but at this time he must have 
laid the foundation of his classical knowledge, which is 
reckoned very considerable. 

He next entered on a field in which he acquitted himself He goes to 
most creditably. The following is a copy of the entry of his ^^^^^ ^I^q' 
admission at Trinity College, Cambridge : — 

" 1790, July 8. — Admissus est Pensionarius Johannes Singleton 
Copley, filius Johannis Singleton Copley de Boston in America, 
a schola apud Chiswick in Middlesexia sub prgesidio Doctoris 
Home. Annos nat. 18." 

From his wonderful quickness of comprehension and 
strength of memory he was able to make a given portion of 
time devoted to study more available than any man in the 
University, and he would occasionally affect to be an idler 
and a man of pleasure ; but his solid acquirements must have 
been the result of steady application. 

When he was to take his Bachelor's degree, in a good His Aca- 
year, he came out second wrangler, and he proved his honours, 
proficiency not only in mathematics, but in classics and A-D.i79nt. 
general learning, by obtaining a Trinity fellowship the first 
time he sat for this liighly creditable honour.* 

* 1705, October 2 : Joannes Singleton Copley, juratus ct admissus in soeium 
minorcm. 

1797, July 5: Joannes Singleton Copley, juratus ct admissus in soeium 
majorem. 

He took his degree o'"M.A. 1797, and was created LL.D. in 1835. 



10 



EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 



CHAP. 
I. 



His early 
devotion to 
republican 
principles. 



He is ad- 
mitted of 
Liucolu's- 
Inn, but re- 
sides in the 
Temple. 



The tremendous struggle produced by tlie Frencli Eevolu- 
tion between tlie defenders of old institutions however 
defective, and those who contended that all existing govern- 
ments ought to be overturned, was now at its height; and 
young Copley's mind being from infancy imbued with repub- 
lican principles, he took what in American phrase he called 
the " go-a-head side " so warmly and openly, as to run some 
risk of serious animadversion. He gradually became more 
cautious, but, till many years afterwards, when he was^ 
tempted to join the Tory ranks by the offer of a seat in 
parliament and the near prospect of the office of Chief 
Justice of Chester, he thought a democratic revolution would 
be salutary, and he is said to have contemplated without 
dismay the possible establishment of an Anglican Kepublic. 

The law was the profession by which on this, as on the 
other side of the Atlantic, sucli ambitious dreams were to be 
realized. He had no appetite for the necessary drudgery, 
but to gain an object which he had at heart he could for a 
season submit to intense application. For his means of 
subsistence he depended chiefly upon his fellowship; his 
father, having lived rather expensively, had accumulated 
little for him. But the aspiring youth hoped that before the 
time when, by the rules of the College, he must take orders 
or forfeit his fellowship, he should have made sufficient 
progress at the bar to enable him to dispense with all 
adventitious aid. 

On the 19th day of May, 1794, he w^as admitted a member 
of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn by the name and 
designation of "John Singleton Copley of Trinity College, 
Cambridge, Gentleman, eldest son of John Singleton Copley 
of George Street, Hanover Square, in the county of Middle- 
sex, Esq." His residence, however, was in the Temple, 
wliich is chiefly haunted by the students of the Common 
Law, the branch of the profession to A\hich he was destined. 
As soon as he had finally left Cambridge he took chambers in 
Crown Office How. 

He soon after became a pu})il of ]\[r. Tidd, the famous 
Special rieader, and having diligently worked in his chambers 
till ho was well conversant with everything, from the De- 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 11 

claration to tlie Surrebutter, lie commenced Special Pleader CHAP. 
under the bar on his own account. 



Now was the time when I made his acquaintance. He The author 
still kept up a friendly intercourse with Tidd, and attended a ^J^^'^^. ^ 
debating club which was held at his chambers in King's with him. 
Bench Walk. When I entered here as a pupil, and was ^ j^^ i^q^^ 
admitted a member of this club, I had the honour of being 
presented to Mr. Copley, to whom I looked up with the most 
profound reverence and admiration. He was a capital 
speaker, but rather too animated for dry juridical discussion. 
I remember once he was so loud and long upon a question 
arising out of the law of libel that the porters and laundresses 
gathered round the window, in great numbers, listening to 
his animated periods. At last a cry of fire being raised from 
the crowd, the Temple fire-engine was actually brought out, 
and had the effect of putting an end to the flaming oration 
by raising a general laugh at the expense of the incendiary. 
He was very kind to me, and although of much older 
standing and much courted from his university reputation, 
he would ask me to call upon him. In those days I never 
met him in private society, but I did meet him not unfre- 
quently at public dinners of a political complexion. In after 
life he asserted that he had never been a Whig — which I 
can testify to be true. He was a Whig and something more, 
or in one word a Jacobin, He would refuse to be present 
at a dinner given on the return of Mr. Fox for Westminster, 
but he delighted to dine with the " Corresponding Society," 
or to celebrate the anniversary of the acquittal of Hardy 
and Home Tooke. 

As a Special Pleader under the bar, his eloquence being of He attempts 
no service, and a constant attendance at chambers being 3° Tspedai 
expected, which was very distasteful to him, he had not the pieadp- tm- 

• 1 • 1 1 1 111 -1 1 • der the bar. 

success which he expected ; and he determined on being pj.^ ^^.^^^^^ 
called to the bar. But before commencing his forensic in America. 
career he embarked for America, having a strong desire to 
revisit his native country, and to renew an intimacy with 
some relations whom he had left there. With a view to this 
ramble he had solicited and obtained at Cambridge the 
appointment of Travelling Bachelor, and in compliance 



12 PtEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, ^yj^i^ ^1^0 statutes lie remitted to the Yiee-Cliancellor an 

ample account of Transatlantic cities and manners. This I 

have in vain attempted to see, and I am afraid it is lost for 
ever.* His narrative must be exceedingly interesting if it 
detailed his personal adventures ; for he paid a visit of some 
days to the illustrious Washington, and he travelled some 
weeks in company with Louis Philippe — afterwards Elng of 
the French — then a refugee in the United States. 

* Oil my application to Lis College and to the University authorities, search 
was made for these letters, but I Avas informed that they could nowhere be 
found. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 13 



CHAPTEE II. 

AT THE BAE TILL HE WAS APPOINTED SOLICITOE GENEEAL, 

1804-1819. 

As soon as possible after his return from America, Copley was CHAP, 
called to the bar by the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn, and he ^^' 



His slow 

progress. 



became a candidate for business in the Court of King's Bench jjg jg ^^ii^^ 
and on the Midland Circuit. His professional progress was to the bar, 
extremely slow. It used to be said that there were four, and i804, 
only four, ways in which a young man could get on at the fj^- ^^ 
bar: 1. By huggery. 2. By writing a law book. 3. By 
quarter sessions. 4. By a miracle. 

The first was successfully practised by that great nisi prius 
leader Tom Tewkesbury, the hero of * The Pleader's Guide,' 
who not only gave dinners at his chambers to the attorneys, 
but suppers to their clerks : — 

" Nor did I not their clerks invite 
To taste said venison hashed at night : 
For well I knew that hopeful fry 
My rising merit would descry." 

But Copley, although by no means scrupulous about prin- 
ciple, was above any sort of meanness, and always comported 
himself as a gentleman. Although he behaved to attorneys 
and their clerks with courtesy, and would talk very freely 
with them, as with all the rest of mankind, he never would 
flatter them, or court them, or make interest with them to 
obtain business. 2. Park's book on the * Law of Insurance,' 
and Abbott's on the * Law of Shipping,' had recently acquired 
for their respective authors the reputation of deep mercantile 
lawyers, and filled their bags with briefs at Guiklhall. But 
Copley had always a great contempt for authorship, and 
would rather starve than disgrace himself by it. 3. He took 



14 EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP. Iq Quarter Sessions very cordially, and had success in poor- 

' law cases, as well as in defending prisoners charged with petty 

larcenies, but this did not extend his fame beyond the limits 

of a single county, and even here, when the assizes came 

round, he found himself postponed to juniors wdio had won 

reputation as successful special pleaders in London. 4. The 

miracle consists in the conjunction of an opportunity to make 

a great speech in some very popular cause, with full ability 

to improve the advantage. Such an opportunity, at last (as 

we shall see), did arrive to Copley, and his fortune was made, 

although witli the utter sacrifice of his character for political 

consistency. 

A.D. 1813. Meanwhile, finding that, after having been nine years at 

He becomes ^^q j^^j, liis pros^ress was vcrv slow in a stuff o'own. and that 

a Serjeant- i -i i • i . . 

at-iaw. he was not likely soon to gam such a position as entitled him 
to ask to be made a King's Counsel, he resolved to take the 
dignity of Serjeant-at-Law, supposed to be open suo loericuh 
to any barrister of fair reputation and seven years' standing. 
Accordingly he was coifed, and gave gold rings, choosing for 
his motto "Studiis vigilare severis," which some supposed 
was meant as an intimation that he had sotmi his wild oats, 
and that he was now to become a plodder. 
His joy at He remained, however, for a considerable time unchanged, 
ofyapoFeon particularly in his devoted attachment to republican doc- 
trines. Strange to say, his hero w^as ISTapoleon the Great, 
who had established pure despotism in France, and wished to 
extinguish liberty in every other country. But Copley still 
worshipped him, as when he was denominated by J\Ir. Pitt 
" the child and the champion of Jacobinism," and fostered 
some vague idea that when once all tlie existing governments 
of Europe had been overturned, free institutions might foUow. 
He loudly deplored the disasters of the Eussian campaign in 
1812, and felt deep sympathy with the fallen conqueror, 
whose dominions had afterwards shrunk within the narrow 
limits of the Isle of Elba. What then must have been his 
raptures when ho heard that Napoleon had escaped, liad 
landed at Cannes, and was marching triuni])hantly to Paris ! 
It is said that Coj^ley, hearing this news while walking in 
the street, enthusiastically tossed his hat in the air, and cx- 



from Elba. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 15 

<'laimed, " Euroj)e is free ! " Nevertlieless I doubt not that CHAP. 
he rejoiced sincerely in the battle of Waterloo, for he has ' 

always been solicitous for the interests and the glory of his a.d. i815. 
country. 

At this period of his life he mixed little in general society. 
The Tory leaders he utterly esche^Yed. He did make acquaint- 
ance with some eminent Whigs, but thought poorly of them, 
as their notions of reform w^ere so limited. Although he would 
not mix with the Eadicals of the day, who were men of low 
education and vulgar manners^ he thought they might be 
made useful, and by rumour he w^as so far known to them 
that they looked forward to his patronage should they be 
prosecuted by the Crown for sedition or treason. 

At last arrived the crisis of Copley's fate, when a new and 
brilliant career was opened to liim, which he entered upon, 
throwing aside the " Burden of his Principles " as joyfully as 
Christian, in the * Pilgrim's Progress,' got rid of the " Burden 
of his Sins." 

The general pacification of 1815 was by no means imme- 
diately followed by the prosperity anticipated from it. The 
exhaustion of capital during the war was severely felt ; the 
derangement in the monetary system, occasioned by the Act 
of 1797 for sanctioning an inconvertible paper circulation, 
operated most mischievously both upon commerce and agri- 
culture ; and, the artificial stimulus of exorbitantly high 
prices being suddenly withdrawn, a general paralysis of in- 
dustry was the consequence. Bad legislation and an unwise 
severity in the executive government aggravated these evils. 
With a view to keep up rents, the importation of foreign corn 
was prohibited, and the system of Protection, now happily 
exploded, was rigorously acted upon. 

The labouring classes were thus thrown out of employ- 
ment, and general discontent prevailed among them. Instead 
of remedying the evil by allowing a free interchange of com- 
modities with foreign countries, penal laws were passed 
forbidding public meetings and seeking to fetter the liberty 
of the Press. 

This was the time for demagogues to flourisli. Instead of 
seeking a constitutional remedy in parliament, or trying 



If) EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP, to enlighten the public mind, tliey strove to gain eminence 
' and influence by exaggeration, misrepresentation, and the 



A.D. 1817. application of physical force. One of these " Patriots " was a 
certain Dr. Watson, a physician without patients, who col- 
lected large assemblages of people in the Spa Fields, near 
He is coun- London, and by speeches and placards was the cause of a 
Dr. Watson, dangerous riot. He was apprehended, and brought to trial 
hiXSea^ for high treason, the charge mainly relied upon being, that he 
son. had " levied war against the King." 

The prosecution was ill-advised, as the proper course clearly 
would have been to have indicted him for a misdemeanour, 
in which case he must inevitably have been convicted, and 
severely punished by fine and long imprisonment. But Lord 
Liverpool and his colleagues thought it would strengthen 
the government if they could make this out to be a case of 
high treason, and so exhibit a spectacle of lianging and 
beheading. The utmost importance was attached to the 
result of the prosecution, and the ministers confessed that 
they could hardly expect to survive a defeat. 

The leading counsel for the Crown were the Attorney- 
General, Sir Samuel Shepherd, a very sound lawyer, who, 
had it not been for the infirmity of deafness, would have 
filled the highest judicial stations, and the Solicitor General, 
Sir Eobert Gifford, who, on account of his supposed extraor- 
dinary merit, had been lately appointed to that office, while 
wearing a stuff gown behind the bar. 

Their opponents were curiously selected and matched. 
The leader was Sir Charles Wetherell, a high-minded but 
furious ultra-Tory, then breathing vengeance against the 
government, because he had been disappointed in obtaining 
the post of Solicitor General, to which, from his standing, his 
talents, and his services, he had a strong claim. The other 
was Mr. Serjeant Copley, generally understood to entertain 
pretty mucli the opinions professed by the prisoner, though 
with prudence sufficient not to act upon them till there 
should be a fair prospect of their success. 

The trial was at the bar of the Court of King's Bench at 
Westminster, before Lord Ellenborough and his colleagues, 
and began on the Uth of June, 1817. Among the distin- 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 17 

p'uisliecl men who sat on the Bench as auditors was Lord CHAP. 

II 
Castlerea^h, then leader of the House of Commons and ' 



the most efficient member of Lord Liverpool's Cabinet. a.d. i817. 

A clear case of aggravated riot Avas made out ; and, if a 
spy was to be behoved, there had been an organised plot to 
take the Tower and to bring about a revolution. But this 
spy, upon his own showing, was a man of infamous character, 
and he was contradicted by credible witnesses on the most 
material parts of his testimony. Sir Charles Wetherell aslred 
the jury — 

" Will you suffer the purity of British jurisprudence to depend 
upon the credit of that indescribable villain ? Will you add to 
the blood-money he has already earned ? Will you encourage 
the trade and merchandize of a man who lives on blood ? W^ill 
you — the guardians and protectors of British law — will you suffer 
death to be dealt out by him as he pleases ? Will you suffer a 
human victim to be sacrificed on the testimony of that indescri- 
bable villain ? But if you suffer it, I must add, will the British 
public suffer it ? Will the people permit it ? Will they tolerate 
or endure it?" 

The learned counsel had been too abrupt in his declama- 
tion, and had not carried along with him the sympathies of 
the jury, who seemed rather disposed to return an unpropitious 
answer to these interrogatories. 

Serjeant Copley, who followed, was much more calm, His speech 
persuasive, and successful. I heard his speech with great g^l^gj, ^ ^"* 
delight, and I consider it one of the ablest and most effective 
ever delivered in a court of justice. Yet, on re-perusing it, I 
found much difficulty in selecting any passage which would 
convey to the reader an idea of its merit. The whole is a 
close chain of reasoning on the evidence as applicable to the 
charge. Thus quietly does he begin : — 

*' I have been called upon to assist as counsel in a cause which 
in the circumstances with which it is attended, and in the conse- 
quences to which it may lead, is one of the most important that 
has ever occurred in the history of the jurisprudence of this 
country; a cause of infinite importance to the prisoner at the 
bar, whose life and character — everything that can be valuable 
to hira as a man and as a member of the community — arc at 
issue and depend upon your verdict." 

VOL, VIII. C 



18 \ EEIGN OF GEOKGE III. 

^^■^^- After taking a softened view of tlie tumultuous proceedings 

which the prisoner had instigated and sanctioned, he conceded 

A.B. 1817. that they might amount to a riot : — 

" Bnt," said he, " let me again remind you that, although there 
may have been a riot and a dangerous riot, it does not follow 
that war has been levied against the King in his realm. In 
order to constitute a treasonable riot there must have been a 
deliberate purpose and design to overturn the Government. 
Under Lord George Gordon there were forty or fifty thousand 
men marching in columns vrith colours flying and military music 
up to the doors of the House of Commons, and afterwards main- 
taining their possession of the capital for a fortnight. Lord 
George Gordon was indeed tried for treason, but he was ac- 
quitted because, however improper or mischievous his conduct, 
the jury were of opinion (and it was put fairly to them by Lord 
Mansfield) that he had in view no treasonable object." 

When Serjeant Copley observed that, by his skilful treat- 
ment of a part of the case most relied upon by the Crown, he 
had made a deep impression on the jury, he added, with an 
air of seeming humility and sincerity, — 

" I wish I could state it with half the strength with which 
I feel it. But the prisoner in selecting me as one of his 
counsel on this occasion gives the strongest evidence of the con- 
viction he feels of the goodness of his cause. He must have 
known that I possessed no powers of eloquence, and little of the 
skill of an advocate. He must have known that I couhl only 
proceed in a straightforward course, pursuing the subject in a 
plain way, and holding up the facts truly to the jury, leaving 
them to draw their own conclusion in favour of his inno- 
cence." 

Having gone over all the topics which the defence pre- 
sented, seemingly without any plan, but according to the 
most consummate rules of art, he conformed to the Eubric, 
which in the * Service for High Treason' requires a final 
prayer that tlic jury may be directed by Heaven to a right 
verdict; but ho made it short and pithy: — 

" Let me then concliulc b}^ fervently praying that Providenco 
which cnli«i;htcns the minds of men and pours the spirit of truth 
and justice into their hearts will dispense that light and spirit 
to you in the discharge of the groat duty which is cast upon you. 



LIFE OF LOBD LYNDHURST. 19 

From the attention you have paid to the evidence I can only CHAP. 
anticipate a favourable result, and although you cannot approve 
of all the prisoner has said or done, you will without hesitation 
acquit him of this weighty and unfounded charge." 



A.D. 1817. 



The Solicitor General made a clever reply, and Lord 
EUenborough summed up strongly for a conviction ; but the 
jury, after a short deKberation, found a verdict of Not Guilty. 

Lord Castlereagh, who had remained in court in a state Excites the 
of great anxiety till the conclusion of the trial, declared ofLoi^d^^"^ 
to the witty Jekyll, whom he met accidentally the follow- <^astieieagh, 
ing day, that " if Serjeant Copley had been for the Crown caught in a 



the prosecution would have succeeded ;" and expressed a j^afttd wi 
wish that he might never be against the Crown again. The Chesidre 
answer was, "Bait your rat-trap with Cheshire cheese, and 
he will soon be caught." The objection to the joke is that it 
was rather obvious ; for the office of Chief Justice of Chester 
had been so often successfully used to induce adventuring 
lawyers to leave their party, that a man of much inferior 
powers might have given the same recipe for catching- 
Copley. 

Lord Castlereagh, who was a matter-of-fact man, took the 
advice in good earnest, and, having consulted Lord Liver- 
pool, the Premier, obtained his sanction for opening a nego- 
tiation to secure Copley to the Government. Lord Eldon, 
the Chancellor, was not consulted on the subject ; and it is 
a curious circumstance that, notwitlistanding his great power 
in making and unmaldng ministries, he never interfered in 
the appointment of the law officers of the Crown.* 

A communication was immediately made to Copley through 
the medium of an eminent solicitor Avith whom he was inti- 
mate. In the overture nothing was said about Chester, or 
any other appointment ; but a seat in the House of Commons 
for a Government borough was proposed without any express 

* When Copley afterwards was actually sworn in Solicitor General, Lord 
Eldon declared tliat he had never before spoken to him or seen him. 

According to another statement circulated in Westminster Hall, Lord 
Castlereagh is supposed to have said spontaneously at the conclusion of 
Copley's speech, " I can discover in him something of the rat, and I will set 
my trap for him, baited with Cheshire cheese/' 



th 



20 KEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP, condition or promise as to services or reward; nevertheless, 

' with the clear reciprocal understanding that the convertite 

A.D. 1817. was thenceforth to be a thick and thin supporter of the 

Government, and that everything in the law which the 

Government had to bestow should be within his reach. 

This was a terrible temptation into which he was led. 
The chance of a Jacobinical revolution had passed away, and 
there did not seem a possibility of the Whigs coming into 
office during the life of the Eegent, who heartily hated them, 
having basely betrayed them. The Serjeant was ambitious, 
and he was conscious of possessing great powders if he should 
have an opportunity of dis^Dlaying them in Parliament. But, 
])er contra, this would be considered a very flagrant case 
of ratting, because his opinions on the Liberal side were 
known to be extreme, although he had never formally at- 
tached himself to any party, whereas the existing Govern- 
ment was conducted on very arbitrary principles, so that the 
defence of its measures must require a considerable sacrifice 
of conscience. 

In the seventeenth year of the reign of Queen Victoria, 
wdien party distinctions are almost obliterated, it is difficult to 
understand the state of feeling in the end of the reign of 
George III., when conflicting political creeds were nearly as 
w^ell defined as religious, and the transit of a man of any 
eminence from the opposition to the government side caused 
as great a sensation as the perversion of a popular Protestant 
divine to the Church of Eome. Copley must have been 
w^ell aware of the odium, of the animadversions, of the sar- 
casms, of the railleries, which aw^aited him. Another Kegulus, 
he braved them all — with this difference, that he had to con- 
sider not what duty but what interest demanded. 

Out of decency, he asked a little time to deliberate. 
Although very free spoken upon almost all subjects, this is a 
passage of his life which he always shuns, and it would be 
vain to conjecture whether he had any and what internal 
struggles before he yielded. 

AMien the negotiation had been completed ho had a formal 
interview with Lord Liverpool, the i'rime Minister, and 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 21 

witliout a shilling being put into liis hand or anythicg being CHAP, 
said about his Mt, he was enlisted and attested a soldier in ' 



the Tory army. a.d. 1817. 

Soon after, the * London Gazette ' announced that " John He is re- 
Singleton Copley, Esq., serjeant-at-law, was returned to parliament 
serve in Parliament for Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wisrht." ^^"^ ^ 

covermnent 

This was a borough then under the influence of the Treasury, borough, 
and afterwards disfranchised by the Keform Koi. Not ^^«*' ^5- 
having been before in Parliament, he escaped the disgrace of 
walking across the floor of the House, and fronting his 
former associates. For some time he prudently avoided any 
display to attract notice, and he made no " maiden speech." 
He first broke silence in the House by a few observations in 
support of the practice, now abandoned and universally con- 
demned, of giving rewards to witnesses upon the conviction 
of offenders : — " He entered his protest against the broad 
assertion hazarded by an honourable member that the system 
of granting rewards had been productive of great confusion 
throughout the country. He himself," he said, " had been 
engaged for fourteen years on the Midland Circuit, and had 
never known a single instance to justify such a statement." * 

However, he soon showed that he was resolved to con- He becomes 
sider only how he could best please his employers. A Bill o/aiuTie^^ 
was pendine; to continue the Alien Act, whereby the Govern- "leasuves of 
ment was authorised, at their free will and without assigning Tory go- 
any cause, to send out of the country all who were not natural ^^^'"^^^^^• 
born subjects, however long or however peaceably they might 
have resided under the allegiance of the English crown. 
The measure was strongly opposed by Sir Samuel Eomilly 
and Sir James Mackintosh as arbitrary, unconstitutional, and 
in time of peace wholly unnecessary. However, Ministers 
having staked their existence on carrying it, thus was it 
defended by him who had hitherto been the professed admirer 
and eulogist of the French Kevolution : — 

" Let the House examine for a moment what sort of persons 
they were about to admit, if they rejected the Bill. They were 
about to harbour in this country a set of persons from the conti- 



* 38 Hansard, 510. 



22 REIGN OF GEORGE III. 



II 

A.D. 1818 



CHAP, nent, wlio were educated in and wlio had supported all the hor- 
rors of ihe French Eevolution; — persons who were likely to 
extend in this country that inflamed and turbulent spirit by 
which they themselves were actuated — persons who did not 
possess either morality or principle, and who could not be 
expected to respect those qualities in this country." 

There seems to have been a tempest of ironical cheers 
from the opposition benches, prompted by some knowledge 
of the antecedents of the orator. This was a very critical 
moment for him — but his audacity triumphed : — 

" I have expressed," said he, in a calm lowered voice, " and I 
will repeat the opinions which I have deliberately formed, and 
which I conscientiously entertain on this question. I am aware 
that these opinions are distasteful to some honourable Members 
on the other side of the House, who perhaps think that our 
institutions might be improved by a little Jacobinical admixture. 
[Loud cheers and counter-cheers.] I repeat that I express my- 
self as I feel, and I shall never be disturbed by any clamour 
raised on the other side of the House meant to question my 
sincerit}^ ; for there is not any one who truly knows me but is 
aware that the observations I have made are the result of my 
conviction as to the line of conduct which ought to be pursued 
on this occasion. If no Alien Bill existed there might and pro- 
bably would be an influx of persons whose principles and views 
are alarming to all who love the regulated freedom which we 
enjoy. I know that the great mass of the English population 
are well affected to the laws of England ; but all in the House 
must be aware — and if not, the eyes and ears of Members are 
shut — that there still exist in England disafiected persons ready 
to disturb its quiet, — persons who, forming a junction with dis- 
affected foreigners, may be stimulated and encouraged to acts 
of disturbance and outrage. I am not so hazardous a politician 
as to throw an additional quantity of combustible matter into 
the country in order to see how much we can bear without 
exploding. 1 do not wish to make the experiment as to the 
ijuantity of fresh poison which may be inhaled without destroying 
the constitution. In 1793 similar arguments to those of the 
honourable gentlemen opposite had been used, but Parliament by 
disregarding them saved us from those horrors which a reckless 
clamour for liberty had conjured up in another countr3\" * 

The implied promise for such services was duly performed, 

* 38 Ilnnsiud, 820. 



LIFE OP LORD LYNDHUEST. 23 

and Best, afterwards created Lord Wynford, wlio had pre- CHAP. 
viously been rewarded for deserting his party by the Chief ' 



-Justiceship of Chester, having resigned that ofSce on being a.d. i818. 
raised to the bench in Westminster Hall, it was conferred on He is made 
the new renegade, who had already had a slight foretaste tieeofChes- 
of ministerial favour in being created a King's serjeant. ^^' 

" The statesman -we abhor, but praise the judge." 

Immediately proceeding on the circuit, he displayed those 
extraordinary powers and qualities which might have made 
him the very greatest magistrate who has presided in an Eng- 
lish court of Justice during the present century. But, ad- 
mired and praised by all who saw and heard him clothed in 
scarlet and ermine, Copley cared for none of these things, 
. and he was impatient to finish his business in Denbighshire, 
Flintshire, and Cheshhe, that he might get back to St. 
Stephen's to prosecute his ambitious schemes, for which the 
times seemed so propitious. His name is now to be found in 
the list of the ministerial majority in every division, and he 
could be relied upon in every emergency of debate, doubtless 
saying to himself, " the sailor who looks for high salvage 
and prize money must be ready to go out in all w^eathers." 

As a matter of course, upon the first vacancy he was made and Soli- 
Solicitor General to the King, and he regularly became a ^^^^ 
member of Lord Liverpool's government. He talked rather ^'^' ^819. 
licentiously of his chief and of his colleagues, but he very 
steadily co-operated with them in all their measures, good or 
bad. From the beginning Lord Eldon had an instinctive 
dislike to him, and seems to have had a presentiment that 
the man had at last appeared who was to turn him out of 
office. The worthy old-fashioned Peer, who had been a 
sincere and bigoted Tory all his life, could not look with 
benignity on one who, he was credibly informed, had danced 
round the Tree of Liberty to the tune of Qa ira, and he 
declared that he had no faith in political conversions. 
Copley always behaved to him respectfully, but showed no 
earnestness to cultivate him, knowing that he did not liold 
of the Chancellor, and that the Chancellor's long tenure of 
' office must of necessity ere long come to a conclusion. 



24 



EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 



CHAP. 
II. 



A.D. 1819. 



His great 
success in 
his new 
career. 



Unhappy- 
fate of a bro- 
ther RAT. 



His mar- 
riaee. 



Mr. Solicitor's great mortification was to find himself 
serving under Gifford, the Attorney General, his junior in 
standing and greatly his inferior in acquirements and oratory. 
He now transferred himself from the Court of Common Pleas, 
where he had practised since he became a serjeant, to the 
Court of King's Bench, where there is more profitable busi- 
ness. But, although he had precedence here, Gifford having 
stationed himself in the Court of Chancery as a school for 
the woolsack, he had not the first practice. This was retained 
by Scarlett, who (take him for all in all) was the most 
formidable champion for his opponent I have ever known at 
the English bar, and who was at this time irresistible from 
the entire ascendancy he had acquired over Lord Chief Jus- 
tice Tenterden, the presiding Judge. 

Mr. Solicitor's position, however, now appeared very 
prosperous. His spirited and noble bearing had secured him 
a favourable hearing in the House of Commons, and his 
very agreeable manners had made him popular with all 
branches of the profession of the law. Nor did he seem to 
suffer from any unpleasant conciousness of having acted 
questionably, or from any suspicion that he might be ill 
thought of by others. His gait was always erect, his eye 
sparkling, and his smile proclaiming his readiness for a jest. 

How different his fate from that of poor Charles Warren, 

who had only been " a Whig and nothing more." After being 

for years petted by the Whigs, their destined Attorney General, 

and possessed of such celebrity as a " diner out " that he would 

not accept an invitation till he had a list of the company he 

was to meet, — in an evil hour he too afterwards ratted, being 

made Chief Justice of Chester ; but he could not stand the 

reproachful looks and ironical cheers of his former friends 

in the House of Comijions, and he soon died of a broken 

heart — 

'• lUc cruccm i)rctium scelcris tulit, hie diadema." 

I am now to present Sir John Copley in a new light — as a 
man of fashion. Hitherto his converse with the gay world had 
been very limited ; he had seldom been in higher society than 
at a Judge's dinner in Bedford Square ; ho himself generally 
dined at a cofi'ee-house, and when the labours of the day were 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 25 

over he solaced himself in the company of his friends in CHAP. 
Crown Oftice Eow. But he now fell in love with a beautiful ' 



young widow, whose husband, Lieut.-Colonel Thomas, had a.d. i819. 
been killed in the battle of Waterloo. She was the niece 
of Sir Samuel Shepherd, the late Attorney General, at whose 
house he first met her. She received his attentions favour- 
ably, and they were married on the 13th of March, 1819. 

Eorthwith he set up a brilliant establishment in his His domestic 
father's old house, George-street, Hanover-square, which he 
greatly enlarged and beautified. Lady Copley was exceed- 
ingly handsome, with extraordinary enterprise and clever- 
ness. She took the citadel of fashion by storm, and 
her concerts and balls, attended by all the most distin- 
guished persons who could gain the honour of being pre- 
sented to her, reflected back new credit and influence on 
her enraptured husband. There were afterwards jealousies 
and bickerings between them, which caused much talk and 
amusement; but they continued together on decent terms 
till her death at Paris in 1834 — an event which he sincerely 
lamented. He was sitting as Chief Baron in the Court of 
Exchequer when he received the fatal news. He swallowed 
a large quantity of laudanum and set off to see her remains. 
But his strength of mind soon again fitted him for the duties 
and pleasures of life. 



26 REIGN OF GEORGE III. 



CHAPTEK III. 

SOLICITOR GENERAL — ATTORNEY GENERAL — MASTER OF THE 
ROLLS. 1819-1827. 

CHAP. Sir Jolin Copley continued Solicitor General five years, 
' doing his official duty in Court very ably and unexcep- 



A.D. 1819. tionably, but supporting all the measures of Government in 
Parliament with an ostentatious contempt of public opinion. 
He was quite satisfied with the consolation that the Govern- 
ment was strong, and that while it lasted his promotion was 
secure. 
Trial of the During this long period the only great State prosecution 
Sispfrators. ^^^^ ^^^* which arose out of the Cato street Conspiracy, 
which looked like a travesty of * Venice Preserved,' but 
was a real and very detestable plot, to begin with the murder 
of all the fifteen members of the Cabinet when assembled at 
a Cabinet dinner. Thistlewood, a half-pay officer, wdio in- 
duced a number of mechanics and clowns to join with him 
in his scheme of liberation, was first brought to trial, and a 
clear case was made out against him. Mr. Solicitor General 
replied, and satisfied himself witli calmly and clearly reca- 
pitulating the evidence, and showing that it substantiated 
the charge of high treason. In some of the other cases he 
opened the prosecution to the jury in the same tone as if 
he had been conducting an action for " goods sold and de- 
livered," to which no defence could be set up. Convictions 
were obtained without difficulty, and five of the prisoners 
actually suffered death according to the sentence pronounced 
upon them. 
Qy. shouia Tliis is the last instance of capital punishment being 
be^'a ^npUai actually inflicted for the crime of high treason iu these 
onencc? realms. Frost and his associates were convicted of high 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 27 

treason at Monmouth when I was Attorney General, they ^^{j^' 
having engaged in a very formidable armed insurrection and ' 

taken the town of Newport by storm. I succeeded, against a.d. i819. 
the opinion of several members of the Cabinet, in having 
their sentence commuted to transportation for life, because a 
Cjuestion had been raised upon which the Judges were nearly 
equally divided, as to the regularity of the procedure pre- 
paratory to their trial. Again, Smith O'Brien was convicted 
of high treason in Ireland when I was a member of the 
Cabinet, guiding the deliberations of the Government in such 
matters. He was clearly guilty in point of law and fact too ; 
but his rebellion was so ludicrously absurd that I thought it 
would take away all dignity and solemnity from the punish- 
ment of death if it should be inflicted upon him, and my 
advice was followed in offering him a pardon on condition of 
transportation. So foolish was he, that he denied the power 
of the Crown to commute the sentence without his consent ; 
and he insisted on being immediately liberated, — or hanged, 
beheaded, and quartered. I was actually obliged to bring- 
in and push a Bill through Parliament (against which he 
j)etitioned) to sanction the conditional pardon ; and under this 
he is still an exile in the southern hemisphere.* But, upon ^ 
a satisfactory conviction in a real and serious case of high 
treason, I am clearly of opinion that capital j^unishment is 
proper. The temptation to ambitious and unprincipled men 
to engage in revolutionary plans which may at once give 
them power and fame is not adequately met by the mere 
dread of lengthened imprisonment in case of failure, and one 
of the conditions on which resistance may be justifiable is 
that it is successful. 

I must now submit to the painful task of exhibiting? Mr. ^^I'^itiaiy 

. r. 1 T • • A • IT policy of the 

Solicitor Copley as a politician. Antigallican ioryism — government 
generated by the French Kevolution — although near its end, ^fJJi'oa^of' 
was still in morbid vigour, and exhibited most alarming and the reign of 
revolting symptoms. The old genuine Tories I very much '^^^^^ 
respect. They carried to excess their desire of defending 
what they considered the just privileges of the Church and 

* AxKjust, 1858. He lias since; rccoivod a free pardon, and been permitted to 
return to Ireland, where, on account of his folly, he is harmless. 



28 



EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 



CHAP. 
III. 

A.u. 1819. 



November. 



Part taken 
by Lord 
Lyndhurst, 
when Soli- 
citor Gene- 
ral, in sup- 
port of this 
arbitrary 
policy. 



prerogative of the Crown, but they were by no means 
hostile to an improvement in our institutions. They stood 
up for triennial Parliaments, and from the Treaty of Utrecht 
to that concluded by Mr. Pitt with France in 1787 they 
always supported the cause of " free trade " against the Pro- 
tectionist Whiles. 

o 

The terror of innovation inspired by the French Kevo- 
lution entirely changed the nature of the Tories, and made 
them passionately cherish every abuse. Lord Eldon, the 
Chancellor, was the venerable impersonation of this per- 
verted Toryism ; and he still held uncontrolled sway. The 
consequence was, a violent conflict between public opinion 
and the authority of the Government. Discontent some- 
times broke out in licentious publications from the press, and 
sometimes in tumultuary assemblages of the people. These 
were met, not by concession and reform, but by a furious 
extension of the criminal law and by military execution. 
Now came the *' Manchester Massacre," or the " Battle of 
Peteiioo," * when a meeting which was certainly unlawful 
was as certainly dispersed by unlawful means and with un- 
necessary cruelty. However, all the excesses of magistrates 
and soldiers were defended and eulogised by the Secretary of 
State, and Parliament was suddenly summoned to pass new 
laws in restraint of public liberty. In the debate on the 
Address to the Prince Kegent ]\Ir. Solicitor took a prominent 
part, boldly justifying all that had been done at Manchester 
by the civil and military authorities, and asking w^hether it 
could be supposed that his learned friend the Attorney 
General and himself had advised his Majesty's ministers to 
resort to martial violence against the people? Mr. Scarlett 
calmly answered, that " from all he had known of his honour- 
able and learned friend he believed him incapable of such 
conduct, unless, indeed^ his ojnnions had lately undergone a 
very material change!' t 

The famous Six Acts were passed. Fortunately, they 
have all long ago cither expired or been repealed. Whik^ 
they were upon the Statute-Book the Constitution was sus- 

♦ So culled from the pluco near Manchester Nvlicro the nuoliug was held, 
t 41 Hunsnrd, 173. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 29 

pended, oral discussion was interfered with not only at county CHAP, 
meetings but in debating clubs and philosophical societies, ' 

and no man could venture to write upon political or theolo- a.d. i819. 
gical subjects except at the peril of being transported beyond 
the seas as a felon. 

These Acts were carried through the House of Commons 
by Copley. Gifford was still Attorney General, but had not 
nerve for heading the encounter, he too having in his youth 
professed liberal principles, although with much more mode- 
ration than his colleague. On the second reading of *'The 
Seditious Meetings Prevention Bill," they resorted to the 
expedient of Mr. Solicitor apologising for his coming forward 
as leader to explain and support it in a very elaborate speech 
by pretending that the task unexpectedly devolved upon him 
from the sudden indisposition of his honourable and learned 
colleague, which he had only heard of since he came into 
the House. On this occasion Mr. Solicitor resorted to that 
which had become his favourite theme — the horrors of the 
French Eevolution : — 

" It had been said by some honourable gentlemen that the 
disease was merely local. Good God ! was it possible that those 
by whom such an assertion was made had entirely forgotten what 
had already occurred in the world? Was all the experience 
derived from the course and progress of the French Eevolution 
to be lost to the world ? Who did not know that at the com- 
mencement of that revolution a large part of France was not 
alienated from the existing Government? Who did not know 
that it was only in the great manufacturing and populous dis- 
tricts in France that disaffection originally manifested itself, and 
that to the inertness of the friends of monarchy in the other 
parts of that kingdom the deplorable consequences that followed 
were attributable ? " 

Having observed that the anti-revolutionary measures pro- 
posed by the Government could only be judged of properly 
when viewed as a whole, he went over all the Six seriatim, 
lauding them as mild when compared with the evils which 
they were to remedy. Thus he concluded : — 

" The gentlemen on the other side were always advising the 
Ministry to try the effects of conciliation. There was every dis- 
position on the part of Ministers to conciliate the honest, tho 



A.D. 1819. 



30 EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, well-disposed, and tlie loyal ; there was no disposition to exercise 
coercion on them. But how were Ministers to conciliate these 
reformers who were drawing the sword against constitutional 
authority ? It would be weakness to attempt it. They were 
not men to be conciliated. To offer conciliation would be to 
succumb — would be to give a triumph to the disaffected, and 
an encouragement to them to rally round the banners of se- 
dition."* 

In a subsequent debate on what was called '' The Blasphe- 
mous Libel Bill," the Marquis of Tavistock alluded to the 
manner in which the Solicitor General in his former, perhaps 
he might call them his less jprudent clays, had indulged in 
expressing his feelings : — 

Mr. Solicitor General — " I would ask the noble Lord on what 
grounds be brings charges against me for my former conduct ? 
Why am I taunted with inconsistency? I never, before my 
entrance into this House, belonged to any political society, or 
was in any way connected with politics; and even if I liad 
intended to connect myself with any party, I confess that 
during my short parliamentary experience I have seen nothing 
in the views of the gentlemen opposite to induce me to join 
them." t 

This harangue was delivered from the Treasury Bench, 
and was received with derision by the Whig leaders to whom 
it was addressed. At the conclusion Mackintosh whispered 
to Lord John Kussell, who sat next to him, "The last 
sentence, witli the change of one word for a synonyme, 
would have been perfectly true. But, instead of quarrelling 
with our vieivs, he should have said that he did not like our 
pvspedsJ'' X 

Although what Copley said of his not being actually an 
admitted member of any political party before he entered 
Parliament was true to the letter, he was aware that all who 
licard liim knew lie was gainsaying all the opinions and senti- 
ments which he had before entertained and expressed ; and 
that lie would have supported with equal zeal measures, if 
\)ossible, more obnoxious at the will of the Minister He 

* 41 Ilansanl, 007. t Jb-, H3S. 

J Lord John Kui-si'11's profacc to vol. vi. of his 'Life of Moore.' 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 31 

was accordingly compared to the mercenary soldier ready to CHAP, 
obey every command of his superior officer, and exclaiming — ' 



A.D. 1820. 



" Pectore si fratris gladium juguloque parentis 
Condere me jubeas . . . 
. . . invita peragam tamen omnia dextra." 

The Bills were all carried by large majorities, and for a 
time we could not be said to live in a free country. But an 
explosion was at hand which, when it burst forth, caused the 
Six Acts to be forgotten. 

On the 30th of January, 1820, died George III., in the Death of 
sixtieth year of his reign. As he had long been civilly dead, ^ndfnild' 
although his effigy was still placed upon the coin and the of Queen 
government was administered in his name, this event would England. 
have caused little sensation, and would hardly have produced 
any change in the aspect of public affairs, had it not been 
that while the power of the Eegent (become George IV.) 
remained as it was, Caroline of Brunswick was now Queen of 
England, and, unless some proceedings were instituted against 
her, entitled to all the rights and privileges of that exalted 
station. 

Her husband, who would sooner have renounced his throne 
than shared it with her, had been collecting evidence to prove 
her guilty of conjugal infidelity, and now intimated that this 
would immediately be brought forward against her, unless 
she would consent to live abroad as a private individual, upon 
a liberal allowance to be settled upon her. Having rejected 
this offer with contempt, she entered London amidst the 
plaudits of the populace, and his Majesty declared war 
against her by laying a gi-een bag, containing the criminatory 
evidence, on the table of both Houses of Parliament. 

In the scandalous and ill-judged proceedings whicli followed, The Queen's 
Copley was not at all to blame. He was not consulted on 
the expediency of bringing the Queen to an open trial ; ho 
never spoke upon the subject in the House of Commons, and 
when the Divorce Bill was introduced into the House of 
Lords, he strictly confined himself to his professional duty as 
an advocate, in trying to prove the allegation of adultery 
which the preamble of the Bill contained. The Queen's 
Attorney and Solicitor General having obtained leave from 



82 EEIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 

CHAP, tlie House of Commons to aiopear at the bar of the House of 
' Lords as advocates against the Bill, similar leave was given 



A.D. 1820. to the King's Attorney and Solicitor General to support it. 

In the forensic contest which ensued, Copley appeared to 
great advantage compared with Gifford, his colleague, who, 
though naturally acute and shrewd, now lamentably exposed 
his defective education, and proved that his sudden and 
unexpected rise was a mere frolic of fortune.* 
Mr Sdidtor Copley chiefly distinguished himself in the reply. This, 
Copley upon the whole, greatly delighted the King, although his 
Queen. ^^ Majesty was somewhat offended by the banter and persiflage 
in which the counsel occasionally indulged to a degree hardly 
suitable to the solemnity of the occasion and the dignity of 
the royal personages on whose conduct he commented. His 
chief resource was to excite the jaded attention, and to chase 
the growing ennui of his hearers, by humorous quotations 
and striking analogies. In pressing the topic of the rapid 
promotion of Bergami by the Queen from being a common 
courier, wearing livery, to a high office in her household, he 
asked : — 

"Is it possible that we can shut our eyes to the inference 
which must of necessity be drawn ? What are the services thus 
rewarded ? One of the best dramatic authors, in speaking upon 
subjects of this kind, has given us this solution ; for your Lord- 
ships will find that it is put into the mouth of a Roman Empress 
in a situation, and under circumstances, which I will not de- 
scribe : — 

' Thread-bare chastity 

Was poor in the advancement of her creatures ; 

Wantonness — magnificent.' " 

In commenting upon the fact that, in travelling, Bergami's 
room in the hotels they visited was always next hers, and on 
the explanation of her counsel, that it was for lier protection, 
and to guard against surprise, Copley thus raised a rather 
indecorous laugh : — 

*' Oh I all this was intended to guard against surprise, against 



* I regret to bo obliged to si^eak thus slightingly of a very amiable man. 
To liim no blame was to be iini)utod in any part of his career. He received 
his various i)romoti()ns without solicitation or intrigue, and although they were 
johs, they were tlie jobs of others, to whom his elevation was convenient. 



A.D. 1820. 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUEST. 38 

some dano;er with whicli slie was threatened . Are we to be led CHAP. 

Ill 
away by the confident assertions of counsel ? I look around to 

see whether I can possibly discover to what my learned friend 
refers, or from what source he takes the idea of a ' surprise.' I 
have not been able to discover it, except in a grave author with 
whose writings I know him to be very conversant. In Foote's 
* Trip to Calais,' I see something like a hint for this. MiniJcen, 
the chambermaid, and O'Donovan, the Irish chairman, are discus- 
sing the extraordinary friendship of Sir Henry Hornby for their 
mistress, and the protection he afforded her, which had caused 
much scandal, but which he thus explains away — 

" ' My Lord was obliged to go about his affairs into the North for 
a moment, and left his disconsolate lady behind him in London.' 

^t^IiniJcen. — ' Poor gentlewoman ! ' 

" 0' Donovan. — ' Upon which his friend Sir Henry used to go 
and stay there all day, to amuse and divert her ! ' 

*' Miniken. — ' How goodnatured that was in Sir Henry !' 

" 0' Donovan. — ' Kay ; he carried his friendship much farther than 
that ; for my Lady, as there were many highwaymen and footpads 
about, was afraid that some of them would break into the house in 
the night, and so desired Sir Henr)" Hornby to be there every night.' 

" Miniken. — ' Good soul ! and I suppose he consented.' " 

The Solicitor General's speech, which lasted two days, was 
thus concluded : — 

" In retiring from your Lordships' bar we should be guilty of 
the greatest ingratitude if we did not make to your Lordships 
our acknowledgments for the kindness which we have experi- 
enced at your Lordships' hands. Never came a cause into a 
Court of Justice in which there was so much anxiety with 
respect to every step in its progress, and with respect to its final 
result. Every passion has been successfully appealed to in the 
conduct of the defence by my learned friends on the other side. 
They have well and faithfully discharged their duty to their 
illustrious client. We make no complaint of their conduct. We 
rejoice to see such talents exercised in the defence of a Queen of 
England. My Lords, my learned friends have endeavoured to 
awaken successively all the sympathies and all the passions of 
your nature. They have even appealed to the basest of all pas- 
sions — the passion of fear. In this high and august assembly, 
the elite, if I may so express mj^self, of a nation renowned for its 
firmness and intrepidity, my learned friends have appealed to 
the passion of fear. You are told by one of my learned friends 
that if you pass this Bill into a law, you will commit an act of 

VOL. VIII. D 



A.D. 1820. 



4 EEIGN OF GEOKGE IV. 

CHAP, suicide. Anotlier of my learned friends tells j'on that ' you are 
to pass the Bill at your peril ! ' These words hung upon the lips 
of my learned friend for a time sufficiently long to be under- 
stood ; and they were afterwards affectedlj^ withdrawn. I know, 
my Lords, that you will not dare to do anything that is unjust. 
At the same time I know that what justice requires you will do, 
without regard to any personal consideration that may affect 
y yourselves. But, my Lords, it is not in this place alone that 
these arts have been resorted to. The same course has been 
pursued out of doors ; the same threats have been held out, and 
every attempt has been made to overawe and intimidate the de- 
cision of 3^our Lordships. Even the name of her Majest}^ herself 
has been profaned for this purpose. In her name, but undoubtedly 
without her sanction, attacks of the most direct nature have been 
made against all that is sacred and venerable in this empire 
— against the constitution — against the sovereign — against the 
hierarchy — against all orders of the State. My Lords, this could 
not proceed from her Majesty. Her name must have been made 
use of by persons aiming, under the sanction and shield of that 
name, at some dark and pernicious designs. Believing other- 
wise, my Lords, we must imagine that her Majesty was aiming 
at the overthrow of the government of the country, to be replaced 
by revolutionary anarchy — 

dum Capitolio 

Kegina dementes ruinas, 

Fuuus et imperio parabat, 

might in that case become a new asra with our posterity. My 
Lords, if, having considered the whole case, j^ou should have 
the strongest conviction on your mind that the Queen is guilty 
of the charges which are imputed to her in this Bill, but you 
should think that in strictness there is not legal proof on which 
you can judicially act, I admit that you must adopt the language 
suggested by my learned friend Mr. Denman, and say 'Go and 
SIN NO MORE.' But, my Lords, if, bending your minds earnestly 
to the contemplation of the evidence, and drawing from it as 
Judges, as men of understanding and men of honour, its just and 
legitimate conclusion, the case is made out so strongl}^ so fully, 
and in a manner so satisfactory as to leave no reasonable doubt 
upon your Lordships' minds, then, my Lords, knowing what I 
do of the ti'ibunal 1 am now addressing, I am sure you will pro- 
nounce your decision on this momentous question with that 
firmness which is consonant with your exalted station."* 



* Iltiiisanl, N. S., vol. iii. Sec 'Lives of Cbaucellors/ vol. vii. chap. 201. 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUEST. 35 

I need not mention that, althouo'li tlie second readino- of CHAP. 

... III. 

the Bill was carried by a small majority, it was afterwards ' 



withdrawn by his Ministers, to the great disgust of the Sove- a.d. i820- 
reign, who had ever after a grudge against them, and a liking '^^~^' 
for Copley, in return for his vigorous support of it.* 

No change took place in the law officers under the Govern- He still 
ment for the three following years. During this period Copley SSon 
spoke in the House of Commons not unfrequently, but it was ^^^^^ P®"^^ 
only officially, as was expected of an Attorney or Solicitor all law 
General in the old regime, in defending all arbitrary acts of a^'^°^°"^^^- 
the executive Government, and opposing all attempts to im- 
prove our laws. He was particularly zealous in denouncing 
Sir James Mackintosh's Bill for taking away capital punish- 
ment from the offence of forgery ; and in an elaborate speech 
he tried to prove that such a measure would be fatal to paper 
credit, and to the commerce of the country. f Than such an 
exhibition nothing can more strikingly illustrate the odious- 
ness of the system of government which happily was then 
drawing to a close, for Copley himself was enlightened and 
humane, and when he was at liberty to act according to his 
own feelings, without offending his superiors or endangering 
his own advancement, he was disposed to take the liberal 
side on every question, and to assist in mitigating the barba- 
rous severity of our penal code. 

At last, on Gifford succeeding Sir Yicary Gibbs as Chief Oct. 1824. 
Justice of the Common Pleas, Copley became Attorney Attorney 
General. Since the time of Thurlow and Wedderburn no ^^^^^^'^^• 
Attorney General had been in the House of Commons so 
prominent a member of the Government. Yet, after a diligent 
search in Hansard, I can find no speech of his at this period of 
his career which would now be found interesting. 

The topic which then agitated the public, and on which 

* On the reassembling of Parliament in January, 1821, Copley further 
showed his zeal on the King's side, by a speech against the motion to censure 
the omission of the Queen's name from the Liturgy, saying, " His impression 
■was, that no person could agree with the present motion without being alike 
an enemy to the monarch and the monarchy." A motion was made to take 
down these words ; but they were explained away so as, without spoiling 
their pith, to get rid of the charge of being disorderly. — Hansard, vol. 
iv. 199. 

t Hansard, N. S., v. 895. 

D 2 



36 



REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAP. 

m. 



A.D. 1824- 
1826. 



His views 
upon the 
question of 
Catholic 
Emancipa- 
tion. 



His speech 
against the 
Prisoners' 
Counsel 
Bill. 



the people, and the Parliament, and the Cabinet were nearly 
equally divided, was " Catholic Emancipation." This topic 
Copley as yet had cautiously avoided, uncertain which side 
was likely to prevail. There w^ere very contradictory rumours 
respecting the private inclinations of George IV. The Duke 
of York, heir presumptive to the crown, had publicly made a 
vow that he never would consent to the measure — but his life 
was considered very precarious, and there was little chance of 
his surviving the reigning sovereign. Lord Liverpool, the 
Prime Minister, although he had steadily opposed further con- 
cession to the Catholics, had done so with much moderation, 
and he had allowed their admission to Parliament to be an 
'*open question." Lord Eldon and Peel were stanch anti- 
Catholics ; but the former was declining fast in political influ- 
ence, and the latter had given alarming signs of a tendency 
to liberalism. On the other hand, Canning, leader of the 
House of Commons since the death of Lord Castlereagh, with 
a rising reputation, was a zealous and sincere emancipator. 
It' Copley had acted according to his own secret wishes, he 
would have both voted and spoken for the bill to allow Eoman 
Catholics to sit in Parliament, as well as for the more limited 
measure to allow Eoman Catholic Peers to sit in the House 
of Lords. However, he considered the more prudent course to 
give an anti-Catholic vote, without committing himself by a 
speech, — taking care in private conversation to intimate that 
he liad no decided opinions upon the subject, and that a change 
of circumstances might justify a change of policy. 

He still resisted all reforms of the law proposed by oppo- 
sition members. Thus the bill for allowing counsel to address 
the jury in cases of felony he denounced as unnecessary and 
dangerous. " At present," he said, " the Judge is of counsel 
for the accused in trials for felony. But if the counsel for the 
defence were to make a speech fuU of infhimmation and exag- 
geration, which must inevitably happen, then it would be 
replied upon by the Judge in his charge, and he would thus 
become of counsel against the prisoner." * So he urged very 
forcibly all the fallacious arguments which in a subsequent 



* Ilausard, N. S., xi. 2(i7 ; xv. 590. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 37 

stage of his career, when law reform had become popular, he CHAP, 
as forcibly refuted, calling forth the remark that he had made ' 



the best speech against, and the best speech for the Bill. a.d. i824- 

During all the time that he was Attorney General, he never ^^'^^' 

filed a single information ex officio for a libel. With Lord conduct as 

Castlereao:h died the system of tryins: to sfovern by terror. P"^^^^ P^'^" 

cin?o " J n iD J ^ secutor 

►Some of the Six Acts expired without any attempt to continue while 
them, and the others became a dead letter. This change is to Genmi.^ 
be ascribed mainly to the more enlightened yiews of Canning, 
who was now rapidly gaining the ascendant, being warmly 
supported by Huskisson, who had been introduced into the 
Cabinet to the great disgust of Lord Eldon, while Peel, the 
Home Secretary, was beginning himseK to set up for a law 
reformer, and on all subjects except Catholic emancipation 
was alarming the oiotimists, who thought that our institutions 
at the close of the reig-n of George III. had reached a state of 
absolute perfection. If Copley had been directed to file as 
many criminal informations as Sir Yicary Gibbs, who placed 
widows and old maids on the floor of the Court of King's 
Bench to receive sentence for political libels published in 
newspapers which they "had never read, because they received 
annuities secured on the profits of the newspapers afore- 
said, I fear me he would have obeyed, and would have produced 
very plausible reasons to justify what he did ; but I believe 
that he had sincere pleasure in following the mild course 
towards the press which distinguished his Attorney General- 
ship, being swayed both by his natural good-humour and by a 
reasonable conviction that, unless " libels " contain some direct 
insult to religion or some direct incitement to violate the law, 
the state prosecutor had better leave them to be answered 
and refuted by the press, or quietly to drop into neglect. 

Chancery reform (as afterwards in 1852) was now the great The part 
subject of agitation. Lord Eldon, in his own court and in ^^^^^^ ^ 
the judicial department of the House of Lords, had allowed Chancery 
arrears to accumulate which could not be cleared off in the 
lifetime of the litigants ; and to expose this abuse the opposi- 
tion were frequently moving for returns and for committees 
of inquiry. The staff of Judges to dispose of equity business 
was certainly insufficient, and much of the delay so grievously 



38 EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, complained of arose from the absurd system, now happily 
' exploded, of the Judge before whom a cause was heard re- 
A.D. 1824- ferring it to another Judge, called a " Master in Chancery," 
1826. y^^^i-^ perpetual appeals and fresh references between them. 

Lord Eldon, however, was personally answerable for unne- 
cessary and culpable '' cunctation," as he called it, in pro- 
tracting the arguments of counsel and in deferring judgment 
from day to day, from term to term, and from year to year, 
after the arguments had closed and he had irrevocably decided 
in his own mind what the judgment should be. His colleagues 
in the Cabinet were fully aware of his infirmity, and would 
have been well pleased to be rid of him. But they knew that 
he had great authority with the King, and that the " Church- 
and-King " party looked up to him as their head ; so that any 
affront to him might be fatal to the existing administration. 
Copley had a nice game to play. The administration was to 
be upheld, for he would have been overwhelmed in its ruins ; 
but Lord Eldon, as far as was consistent with that object, was 
to be vilijoended, so that at the first convenient opportunity 
he might be got rid of, and a fit successor might take his 
place. Lord Eldon, knowing that in spite of long cuncta- 
tion, " that fell Serjeant Death " would, ere long, be " strict 
in his arrest," destined as his successor his humble favourite 
Gifford, and looked suspiciously on Copley, who not only 
had been a Jacobin, but had acquired a high position in 
the House of Commons as an anti- Jacobin, and was now 
ready, as pro-Catholic or anti- Catholic, to avail himself 
of the first favourable opportunity of clutching the Great 
Seal. 

In private Mr. Attorney talked with the most undisguised 
and unmitigated scorn of the Lord Chancellor. In the House 
of Commons he applied to the " venerable Judge " all the 
epithets which courtesy required ; but he only came forward 
in his defence when forced so to do by ofiicial etiquette, and 
then he lavished upon him praise strongly seasoned with 
sarcasm. 

To stave off the repeated motions for Chancery reform, a 
commission had been appointed, which, after sitting two 
years, had made a report recommending certain improvements 



LIFE OF LOED LTNDHUEST. 39 

in the procedure of the Court of Chancery. Copley's last CHAP, 
performance in the House of Commons as Attorney General ' 



was to introduce a Bill founded on this report. After a very a.d. 1826. 
luminous exposition of the flagrancy of the existing system isth May. 
—irresistibly suggesting the question, Wliy had it teen allowed 
to exist so long f — he said, " He would not venture to expatiate 
upon the merits of the present Chancellor, a theme above his 
power ; he would content himself with reminding the House 
of the panegyric lately pronounced on the noble and learned 
Lord by a learned member, who had eloquently dwelt upon 
the artlessness and simplicity of his mind and of his manners, 
his singular disinterestedness, and his readiness to sacrifice 
his love of retirement to the discharge of his official duties." * 
The Bill, having been read a first time, was allowed to lan- 
guish till Lord Eldon had resigned the Great Seal to Lord 
Lyndhurst. 

But we have still some notice to take of our hero before he His practice 

. at ibe 

reached this elevation. While Attorney General he continued bar whUe 
the second in practice in Westminster Hall, thouo-h still at a ^t^o™ey 

•'- . . General. 

long distance from Scarlett^ who, by his o^vn merits and the 
partiality of Lord Tenterden, was decidedly the first. At 
this time no state trial nor cause celebre of any sort arose, and 
I have in vain looked for any further producible specimen of 
Copley's forensic eloquence. He was wonderfully clear and 
forcible ; but he could not make the tender chords of the 
heart vibrate, having nothing in unison with them in his own 
bosom. He was more solicitous about the effect he might 
produce while speaking than about the ultimate result of the 
trial. Therefore he was unscrupulous in his statement of 
facts when opening his case to the jury, more particularly 
when he knew that he was to leave the court at the conclu- 
sion of his address, on the plea of attending to public business 
elsewhere. I was often his junior, and on one of these occa- 
sions, when he was stating a triumphant defence, which we 
had no evidence to prove, I several times 2)li^cked him by 
the gown and tried to check him. Having told the jury that 
they were bound to find a verdict in his favour, he was leaving 
the court ; but I said " No ! Mr. Attorney, you must stay and 
* Hansard, N. S., vol. xv., p. 1228. 



40 



EEIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 



CHAP. 
III. 



A.D. 1824- 
1826. 



His aspira- 
tion to the 
office of 
Prime Mi- 
nister, 



and to the 
character of 
a man of 

fashion. 



examine the witnesses ; I cannot afford to bear tlie discredit 
of losing the verdict from my seeming incompetence : if you 
go, I go." He then dexterously offered a reference — to which 
the other side, taken in by his bold opening, very readily 
assented.* 

Strange to say, although he had an eye to the woolsack, he 
\70uld not be tempted by any fee to go into the Court of 
Chancery as counsel, nor would he take a brief in Scotch 
appeals in the House of Lords. For gaining the object of his 
ambition he trusted entirely to politics, and, if asked how he 
expected to be able to dispose of "demurrers for want of 
equity," and " exceptions to the Master's Eeport," and how 
he should know whether to affirm or reverse interlocutors 
of the Court of Session, he would gaily exclaim, *' alors 
eomme alors." 

About this time he was so much petted by the high Tories 
that he had some vague notion of cutting the profession of the 
law altogether and accepting a political office, in the hope 
that he might succeed Lord Liverpool ; and, with the addition 
of fixed principles, he certainly would have been far better 
qualified than Perceval, w^ho, to the satisfaction of his party, 
had become Prime Minister from being Attorney General. 
Copley had a much better stock of general information and 
superior oratorical powers, with fascinating manners, which 
made him a general favourite. He now more than ever 
affected the man of fashion, and when he took a trip to Paris 
was flattered with any raillery which supposed that he in- 
dulged in all the gaieties of that dissipated capital. By 
driving himself about the streets of London in a smart 
cabriolet, with a " tiger " behind, he greatly shocked Lord 
Eldon, who exclaimed, " What would my worthy old master, 



* It was related that Clarke, the leader of the Midland Circuit (under 
whom Copley was reared), having in the middle of his o[>ening speech 
observed a negotiation going on for tho settlement of the cause, stated con- 
fidently an important fact which he had imagined at the moment. Wlicn 
all was over, his attorney afterwards said to him privately, "Sir, don't you 
think wo have got very good terms? but you rather went beyond my instruc- 
tions." " You fool," cried he, " How do you suppose you could have got 
such terms if I had stuck to your instructions ? " lint in the case in the text, 
Co[)k'y had enleriaincd no ulterior view beyond maldng a dashing speech, 
and leaving poor Campbell to lose the verdict. 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHURST. 41 

George III., have thouglit of me, liad Jie heard of his Attorney ^^f^* 
General comporting himself like a prodigal young heir dissi- \ 



pating a great fortune?" I know not whether Copley had a.d. i824- 
any view to the Foreign Office, for I never heard him say ^ ^^' 
so: but he particularly cultivated the corps dijrilomatique, 
who were constantly to be seen at his table and at Lady 
Copley's receptions. She now weeded her visiting-book 
almost entirely of lawyers, and their wives and daughters; 
but he, by his lonhomiej or rather his abandon, contrived to 
keep up his popularity with all ranks. A proof of this was He is re- 
that, becoming a candidate to represent the University of tJJe^unim- 
Cambridge in Parliament, he was warmly supported by sity of Cam- 
lawyers — Tory, Whig, and Kadical — and he w^as triumphantly ^^ ^^' 
returned. Luckily, he had not to make a speech, nor to 
publish addresses to the constituents ; so that even when he 
took his seat as the representative of a body strongly opposed 
to Catholic emancipation, he was at liberty to espouse either 
side, without the open scandal of inconsistency. 

But events were thickening which determined him to His 



reasons 



declare himself a strong anti-Catholic. Lord Gifford, who J^^^^i^Jj^ 
had conformed himself in all things to Lord Eldon's views, himself a 
had been the destined anti-Catholic Chancellor. But in the cathoHc. 
beginning of September, 1826, this worthy person, whose 
rise had been so extraordinary, suddenly died, making a 
vacancy in the office of Master of the Eolls, and in the 
reversion of anti-Catholic Lord Chancellor. Lord Eldon 
wished much that Sir Charles Wetherell, then Solicitor 
General, whose notions about Church and State exactly 
agreed with his own, should succeed him. Of Copley the 
bigoted ultra-Tory had an utter horror; for in dreams he 
had seen this rival snatching the great seal from his hand, 
and heard him delivering a harangue in favour of the Eoman 
Catholics. 

Lord Liverpool, full well knowing the Chancellor's senti- 
ments on this subject, thus cautiously addressed him : — 

*' You will, of course, have heard the melancholy and unex- 
pected death of Lord Gifford. lie is a very great loss at this 
time both public and private. I promise you that I will speak 
to no one on the subject till I have seen you. Having, however, 



A.D. 1826. 



42 EEIGN OF GEOEGE lY. 

CHAP, received an account yesterday of Lord Gifford's extreme danger, 
it was impossible I should not turn in my mind during the night 
what was to arise, if we were so unfortunate as to lose him. I 
confess to you, the present inclination of my mind is that the 
Attorney General should be made to accept the Mastership of 
the Eolls. He has no competitor at the bar, at least on our side, 
nor any one on the Bench who can compete with him for the 
highest honours of the profession. Indeed, I know not what 
else can be done which would not increase all prospective diffi- 
culties to an immense degree. 

"Do not return any answer to this letter; but turn it well 
over in your mind, and let us talk of it when we meet to- 
morrow." 

Lord Eldon in great consternation wrote a " most private 
and confidential " letter to Sir Kobert Peel, in which, after 
mentioning Lord Gifford's death and observing that "the 
prejudice created against him in the public mind was gene- 
rated by the industry of some who envied his rapid profes- 
sional advancement more than by any other assignable 
cause," he thus proceeds : — 

" Of course the Minister is now looking for a successor — he 
naturally looks to Copley. I doubt extremely whether he will 
accept the office of Master of the Eolls, even with the prospect of 
possessing the Great Seal. His professional emoluments must be 
very great — the object for him naturally to look to is the King's 
Bench, and report as to the health of the Chief Justice does not 
represent the prospect of obtaining that object as at a distance. 
I have stated to Lord Liverpool, who has conducted himself to 
me as to this very respectfully, my apprehensions that he will 
decline the Lolls. He ought not, perhaps — 3'et a man of his 
eminence in that part of the profession in which he has been en- 
gaged may probably feel unwilling to go into a Court of Equity 
as a Judge, never having been in one as a counsel, and especially 
in that Equity Court in which much business is rather business 
of form than requiring the exercise of a powerful intellect. He 
lias always refused briefs in Scotch causes, which looks as if his 
views were directed to the King's Bench, and not to the office 
of Chancellor, who must hear so many Scotch causes." 

The object of this letter was to persuade 8ir liobert Peel 
that Copley was not fit lor the oflice of JMaster of the Lolls, or 
of Chancellor, and to induce liim to interfere to bring about 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 43 

anotlier arrangement : but the attempt wholly failed, and in CHAP, 
a subsecpent letter to his confidant, Lord Eldon says : ' 



A.D. 1826. 



" With respect to Copley he accepted the office, and, it appeared 
to me, without any doubt about accepting it. Indeed, though I ^^^^^o^^ 
doubted whether he would accept, as he never had been in a the Rolls. 
Court of Equity at all, and never would take a brief in a Scotch 
cause, yet, considering that the Chancellorship and the Chief 
Justiceship of the King's Bench may be soon open, — and, on the 
other hand, the change of Administration may not be a thing so 
impossible in the mean time, as to make the acceptance a foolish 
thing of an office and income worth 8000?. a-year for life, which 
may be accepted without prejudice to his moving to either of the 
above offices, if they happen to be vacant in due time, — I think 
he has acted very prudently, especially taking into the account 
that he goes to school in the lower form (the Eolls) to qualify 
him to remove into the higher, if he takes the Chancellorship." 

In truth, Copley never did hesitate one moment in accept- 
ing the offer, although clogged with the condition that he 
must not for the present ask a peerage. Lord Eldon had 
pointed out the impossibility of his sitting, as Gifford had 
done, and presiding as Deputy Speaker in the decision of 
appeals. This point was conceded by Lord Liverpool to 
Lord Eldon, who undertook to get through the appeals with 
the assistance of Alexander, C.B., and Vice-chancellor Leach. 
They were both well acquainted with Scotch law, and he 
suggested that, though commoners, they might be appointed 
to act as Deputy Speakers, and in fact give judgment in the 
name of the House, although they could not give any reason 
for the decision.* Copley felt that for him to have attempted 
to speak ex cathedra on the Scotch tenure " a me vel de me " 
woukl only have exposed him to ridicule, whereby his power 
of supplanting Lord Eldon might be materially impaired ; 
whereas, by remaining in the House of Commons as Master 
of the Rolls, he would acquire new weight there, and might 

* This attempt led to very anomalous and inconvenient consequences, and 
will never bo repeated. Leach, as he could not make a speech in the House, 
used to get the counsel and solicitors into a committee room, and there state to 
them his reasons for the judgment of the House. He might just as well have 
assembled a mob round him in Palace Yard and parodied the giving of a 
judgment or any other proceeding of the House of Lords. 



44 REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, be ready at any favourable moment to give the cowjp de grace 
' to the condemned Chancellor. 

A.D. 182G. On the first day of Michaelmas Term, 1826, he appeared 
at the Chancellor's levee in a gold-embroidered gown as 
Master of the Kolls. He looked a little abashed, for hitherto 
this office had generally been declined by aspiring Attorney 
Generals as being considered rather a comfortable shelf for 
second-rate men ; but he soon recovered his air of self- 
satisfaction and hilarity, conscious to himself that he was 
playing a deep and a sure game. 

His com- Of his judicial performances as Master of the Rolls hardly 

portment as . . rm 1 i j l r» 1 • -r» n» 

an Equity a vcstigc remain s. ihey ought to be lound m *ltussells 
Judge. Chancery Keports,' but there, although his name is men- 
tioned, no decision of his of the slightest importance is 
recorded. The gossip of the profession during the short 
jDcriod when he continued Master of the Eolls, was that " he 
sat as seldom as possible, and rose as early as possible, and 
did as little as possible." Yet he shew-ed his tact and clever- 
ness by avoiding all scrapes into which he might have fallen, 
and by keeping the bar and the solicitors in good humour. 
He devotes His wholo energies were now absorbed in political intrigue. 
pS.*"" The death of the Duke of York in January, 1827, after 
having vowed eternal hostility (whether as subject or sove- 
reign) to Catholic emancipation, caused some doubts and 
misgivings to his Honour, the Master of the Eolls, who was 
further told that the life of George IV. had become very 
precarious, and that the Duke of Clarence, now heir pre- 
sumptive, had come round to the side of the Eoman Catholics. 
But a crisis unexpectedly arose to confirm the anti-Catholic 
^propensities which his Honour had confidentially disclosed 
during his canvass for the University, and induced him 
})ublicly and solemnly to proclaim himself a determined and 
Death of uncliangcablo Anti-Catholic. In February, 1 827, liord Liver- 
pool! ^ ' '^^" r^^^^' ^^^^ Prime Minister, was suddenly struclc down by 
Feb. 1827. apoplexy, and although he continued to breathe for some 
months, it was known that his public career was at an end. 
A terrible collision immediately took place between pro- 
Catholics and anti-Catholics. The King laid down as the 
basis of the new government that there sliould be a majority 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 45 

of anti-Catliolics in the Cabinet, and that he should have an CHAP. 
anti-Catholie Keener of his conscience, but that emancipation ' 



should still be ''an open question." This was acquiesced in a.d. I827. 
by all parties, and it was absolutely settled that, whoever 
the Prime Minister might be, there was, at all events, to be 
an anti-Catholic Lord Chancellor. Copley said to himself 
and his intimates, "I am the man." The rivals for the 
premiership were Peel and Canning. The former, indeed, 
said he was willing to continue to serve as Home Secretary 
under some anti-Catholic peer if any one of sufficient repu- 
tation to succeed Lord Liverpool could be discovered — which 
he knew to be impossible. Canning openly and resolutely 
claimed the premiership, but Peel vowed that under a pro- 
Catholic premier he would not serve. Lady Conyngham, 
who now ruled the King, favom-ed Canning, and a detach- 
ment of Whigs, on account of Canning's liberal principles, 
were ready to coalesce with him. 

Although the struggle was going on many weeks, the 
business in parliament proceeded without any public notice 
being taken of Lord Liverpool's illness. Copley again 27th Feb, 
brought in the Bill for reforming the Court of Chancery, in 
which no progress had been made during the last session, 
and he now took a bolder tone in pointing out exi sting- 
abuses and in creating amazement that so consummate a 
Judge as Lord Eldon should so long have tolerated them, — 
insinuating the inference that they -could only be remedied 
under other auspices. 

But his Honour's great object was to shew himself to the Hisceiebrat- 
King and to the country, although no longer disinclined to ao-a^Jsr^ 
reform our civil institutions, and so far in harmony with Catholic 
Canning and his Whig recruits, yet — in religion — a stern ti^i!^^^'^'^" 
uncompromising and inflexible ultra-Protestant. A very 
favourable opportunity for this was afforded by Plunket's 
motion, on the 6th of March, for removing the disabilities 
of his Majesty's lloman Catholic subjects. Copley having 
taken immense pains to prepare himself, and resolutely 
determined to despise any sneers that might be excited by 
his sudden conversion from Jacobinism to bigotry, spoke at 
great length on the second night of the debate, immediately 



46 REIGN OP GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, following Lord Eliot (afterwards the Earl of St. Germans and 
' Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland), wlio had frankly declared that, 
A.D. 1827. although he had hitherto voted against the Catholics, he had 
from recent events come to the conclusion that their emanci- 
pation could no longer be withheld. 

Master of the Bolls. — " I give the noble Lord who has just sat 
down the fullest credit for the manliness of conduct which he 
has displayed on this occasion. The manner in which the 
avowal has been made is as creditable to the noble Lord as the 
avowal itself. For myself, as the representative of a numerous 
and highly distinguished body of constituents w4io have con- 
sidered maturely and felt deeply, even intensely, in this crisis 
of our religion — I trust that I may be permitted to state to the 
House their opinions, in which I full}^ concur.* We are indeed 
standing in a great crisis. The eyes of the countr}^ are fixed 
upon the present deliberations. The great mass of the Protestant 
population of the empire are looking with deep anxiety to the 
result of these deliberations. The great mass of the Catholic 
population of Ireland are looking with still more intense feeling 
of anxiety to the result of these deliberations. Whatever the 
result may be — if it be arrived at by means of calm consideration 
and candid debate — by means of fair statement and cool exami- 
nation — it will be entitled to the acquiescence of the countr}'." 

But he speedily alters this placid tone, and exclaims, — 
" The Protestants of England are put upon their defence. We 
are the parties accused. We are charged with intolerance, with 
religious bigotry, with oppression. Who are our accusers ? The 
professors of the Eoman Catholic religion. They do show that 
severe laws w^ere made against them, but they altogether pass 
over the acts by Avhich those law^s w^ere rendered necessary. 
AVithout wishing to excite any bad or angry feelings, I must ask 
the House to consider the circumstances under which these laws 
w^ere enacted. AVas it upon mere speculation — upon conjectural 
fears — upon remote apprehensions of danger — that tlie Acts of 
Elizabeth were passed for keeping in subjection the Eoman 
Catholics ? The men by whom they w^erc proposed and enacted 
had been observers of the short but eventful reign of Mary. 
Some of them had been sufferers from the religious violence of 
those times. All of them had been witnesses of the persecutions 

* This was very skilful unci artistic, — to divert, if possible, the attention 
of the House from himself to his constituents, nlthongh he was obliged to say, 
sotto voce, that he concurred in their opinions. 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUEST. 47 

in the Netlierlaiids and of the treacherous massacres in France. CHAP. 
The Eoman Catholics of that period were endeavouring day by ' 



day to undermine and overturn the constitution of this country, ^ ^ -^g^r 
and, in concert with the most tyrannical and bigoted government 
that ever existed (I mean Spain), to introduce into England a 
thraldom which our ancestors successfully resisted, and to which 
I trust we, their descendants, will never submit." 

He proceeded at great length to recapitulate the misdeeds 
of the Eoman Catholics down to the Irish massacre of 1641, 
and asked if it was not natm^al to guard against the repetition 
of such outrages. He then came to the attempt to re- 
introduce Popery in the reign of James II., and justified the 
penal code of William III. Catholics having already full 
liberty of worship, he said the only question was " whether 
they should be admitted to the exercise of political power ? " 
By-and-bye he attempted to shew the danger of the Inquisi- 
tion being introduced amongst us. 

"In 1798 the Inquisition was abolished in Spain, in conse- 
quence of the French Eevolution ; but now that cursed, that 
hated engine of misery and torture, that instrument of crueltj'' 
and revenge, was again established in all its original rigour and 
deformity in Spain and in Italy. I do not mean to say that 
the Inquisition will be established in Ireland ; no ; but never- 
theless the Catholic religion is still unchanged, and the same 
power to effect mischief is still in existence. You are assembled 
by the King's writ commanding you to consider matters relating 
to the interests of the State and of the Protestant Church ; and, 
thus assembled, you are called upon to admit as members of a 
Protestant legislature, deliberating upon matters connected with 
the safet}^ of the Church of England, a bod}^ of Eoman Catholics 
hostile to that Church and hostile to it from their principles as 
Eoman Catholics. I regret to say there are in this House some 
lukewarm and indifferent to the interests of the established 
Church, and there are some in this House who are actuated hy 
feelings of enmity towards the Church — although their number 
be small compared with those who cordially love and support it. 
But small as the number of enemies may be, is it prudent to add 
to their number? All who love the Church of England, there- 
fore, are bound to reject this motion. Instead of tranquillising, 
the measure, if carried, would convulse Ireland. The Catholics 
would triumph in their victory, and the Protestants would repine 



48 REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, in the consciousness that they were subdued. A momentary calm 
' would be folloAved by a frightful explosion, and by permanent 
A D 1827 anarchy. The Eoman Catholic religion is a religion of encroach- 
ment, and there are circumstances connected with its existence 
in Ireland which increase the disposition to encroach. Then 
claim would be made after claim till Catholic ascendancy is com- 
pletely established." 

He concluded this speech, of which I have only given a 
few extracts and an imperfect outline, by boldl}^ claiming 
credit for sincerity ! 

" It is not improbable," said he, " that I may be followed by 
my right honourable friend the Attorney General for Ireland 
[Plunket]. There is not any man who possesses greater powers, 
or who can use them more forcibly for the advantage of the cause 
which he espouses. I admire the earnestness with which he has 
entered into this question ; but while I pay this deserved tribute 
to his talent and his zeal, I trust that he will give me equal 
credit for the sincerity with which I entertain the opinions I have 
expressed." * 

He sat down amidst some cheers and a great deal of 
tittering. 
The brief In truth, if ke had any opinions on the subject, they were 

hT^oke'^^ known to be on the other side of the question, and he had 
now spoken literally, as at N'isi Prius, from a brief; for all 
the historical facts and arguments which he had used were 
to be found nearly in the same order in a very able pamphlet 
recently published by Dr. Philpotts, then Prebendary of 
Durham, now Bishop of Exeter. Before Copley concluded, 
the plagiarism was detected by several members, and a 
stanza from, a well-known song was whispered through the 
House :^ 

" Dear Tom, this brown jug which now foams with mild ale, 
Out of which I now drink to sweet Nan of the Yale, 
Was once Toby Philpotts." 



♦ IG Hansard. N. S., 92. I still remained on very familiar tcnns with him, 
and meeting him next evening, freely expressed to ln"m my astonishment at his 
speech. His only answer was, " You will see that I am quite riglit." From 
this time our pergonal intercourse almost entirely ceased, till I myself l>ecame 
a meml)er of the House of I'eers, when we talked together as freely and 
recklessly as ever. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHURST. 49 

Before long, Copley spoke his own real sentiments in CHAP, 
supporting the Duke of Welling-ton's Bill for Catholic em an- ' 



cipation. There is no denying that, on the present occasion, a.d. i82?. 
he acted with a view to the Great Seal as his immediate 
reward. And he succeeded. George lY. set him down as a 
thorough anti-Catholic, and was quite willing to surrender to 
him the keeping of his conscience. Canning was a good deal 
shocked by some of the topics which Copley had resorted to, 
but comforted himself with the reflection that, when in a 
situation to carry emancipation, a rotatory Chancellor would 
be no obstacle in his way. 

The negotiations were still long protracted, but no repu- 
table anti-Catholic peer being found for premier, the King, 
on the 10th of April, commissioned Canning to form a new 
administration. Lord Eldon, thinking that Canning, the new 
minister, could not stand, tendered his resignation. This 12th April. 

, ^ Copley 

was immediately accepted, and Copley, without any affecta- created 
tion or coyness, frankly and joyfully agreed to be his sue- ceUor^^^^^" 
cesser. . The Great Seal, however, remained some time in 
Lord Eldon's custody, that he might give judgment in various 
cases which had been argued before him. 

Meanwhile, Copley was raised to the peerage by the title ^^^ Baron 
of Baron Lyndhurst of Lyndhurst, in the county of South- 
ampton. Every one, foe or friend, had a fling at him ; but, 
on account of his brilliant talents and his delightful manners 
the appointment was by no means unpopular. 



VOL. VIIL 



50 EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAPTER lY. 

LORD CHANCELLOR UNDER CANNING, LORD GODERICH, AND 
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 

1827—1830. 

CHAP. Never was there a greater contrast than between the 
IV . . 

' ousted and incoming Chancellor, both in their intellectual 



Opposite faculties and in their acquirements ; above all, with respect 

views taken ^q what is Called humhug ; — for the one, thinking that man- 

Eidon and kind wcrc governed by it, was always making professions of 

hurst of" ' Jioiiesty and became his own dupe ; while the other, being of 

humbug. opinion that by despising all pretences to political principles 

he should best make his way in the world, affected to be 

worse than he really was, and excited doubts as to his faults 

by exaggerating them. Both these extraordinary men were 

too good-natured to foster actual liatred of each other, but 

that they formed a very low estimate of each other's moral 

qualities they took no pains to conceal. Yet the forms of 

Their re- courtcsy wcre duly preserved between them. When Lord 

counSy Eldon had delivered his judgments, he wrote a very respectful 

letter to Lord Lyndhurst, congratulating him on his elevation, 

and enquiring when it would be convenient that the transfer 

of the Great Seal should take place. The following was the 

becoming answer : — 

" My dear Lord, " ^^°^se Street, April 2Cth. 

"I lliank your Lordship for your kind congratulations. 
With respect to the change of the custody of the Seal, nothing 
more has been stated to me than a wish that it should take 
place before the meeting of the House of Lords.* I beg your 
Lordship will, in every particular, consult your own convenience, 
to which it will be my greatest pleasure to conform. If your 
Lordship will permit me, 1 will wait upon you after I have 



* The House of Lords had been adjoiu-ned from the r2th April to the 
2iid Mny. 



Chancellor. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 51 

made the necessary'' inquiries, and inform your Lordship of the CHAP, 
result. 

" Believe me, my dear Lord (with the deepest sense of your ^ ^ -^g.-,„ 
uniform kindness for mej, to remain, with unfeigned respect, 

" Your Lordship's faithful servant, 

" Lyxdhurst." 

The transfer actually did take place at St. James's, on Lord Lynd- 
the 30th of April, 1827. Lord Eldon, having delivered it auguration 
into the King's hands, withdrew, — his Majesty expressiDg '^f,^J:^)^^^^ 
deep grief at the loss of such a dear councillor; and, Lord 
Lyndhurst being called in, received it from the King, with 
the title of Lord Chancellor, his Majesty expressing his high 
satisfaction at being able to place it in the hands of one in 
whom he placed entire confidence.* 

The 2nd of May was the first day of Easter Term, and 
the day to which the House of Lords had been adjourned. At 
twelve o'clock the new Chancellor held a levee at his house 
in George street, and went from thence to Westminster Hall, 
attended by a crowd of nobles, priv}^ councillors, judges, and 
king's counsel, after the ancient form, except that it was a 
carriage procession instead of a cavalcade. In tlie Court of 
Chancery he took the oaths, the new Master of the Eolls 
holding the book. The oath being recorded, he boldly called 
over the bar. From his ignorance of the practice, motions 
might have been made which would have greatly perplexed 
him ; but, according to the etiquette mentioned by Eoger 
North, in his account of the inauguration of Lord Shaftesbury, 
in the reign of Charles II., nothing was stirred which could 
alarm a novice in the marble chair ; and he rose, whispering 
with a triumphant smile : " You see how well I get on — 
Bah ! there is nothiug in it." 

In another performance, which he had to go through im- 

* The ceremony is tlms described in tlic ' London Gazette :' — 
" At tlie Court at St. James's, the 30th day of April, 1827, 

" Present, The King's ]\Iost Excellent Majesty in Council. 
'• His INIajesty in Council was this day pleased to deliver tlie Great Seal to 
tlie Eight Honourable John Singleton Lord Lyndhurst, whereupon the oath of 
Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain was, by His Majesty's command, 
administered to his Lordship, and his Lordship took his place at the BoarJ 
accordingly." 

E 2 



52 EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, mediately after, lie was perfect. This was taking his place 

' on the woolsack and being seated as a peer. Upon such occa- 

A.D. 1827. sions he was seen to great advantage ; and although he 

He takes would laugh at them when they were over, he played his part 

his seat in ... . i t -^ ^ 

the House With seriousuess and dignity * 

of Lords. Henceforth he was a most distinguished member of this 

branch of the legislature, and he swayed its dehberations for 

good and for evil in very critical times. At first he affected 

to be shy, and he was very reserved. Only twice during 

the subsistence of Mr. Canning's government does he apj)ear 

to have addressed their Lordships. The first was in support 

of a very anomalous measure, to which he was obliged to resort 

from his ignorance of Scottish jurisprudence. He was himself 

wholly unqualified to decide appeals from the Court of 

Session, and the House (at present so rich in law lords, having 

no fewer than four Ex-Chancellors, besides the actual Lord 

Chancellor and the Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench,!) 

could then furnish no law lord who could be asked to do 

His ex- this duty for him, as Lord Eldon could not, with dignity, have 

pedient for q^qIq([ ^g -j-j^e deputy of his successor. The expedient was, to 

Scotch ap- have Alexander, the Chief Baron, and Leach, the Master of 

^^^ ^' the Kolls, to. sit for him by turns, three days in the week ; 

and a commission, authorising them respectively to act as 

* Extract from the Journals of the House of Lords, 2nd May, 1827 : — 

" His Royal Higliness the Duko of Clarence acqiiaiuted the House that his 
Majesty had been pleased to create the Right Honourable Sir Jolm Singleton 
Copley, Knt., Lord Chancellor of that part of the United Kingdom of Great 
Britain and Ireland called Great Britain, a peer of these realms. 

" Whereupon his Lordsliip, taking in his hand tlie purse with tlie Great 
Seal, retired to the lower end of the House, and, having there put on his robes, 
was introduced between the Lord Ploward de Waldcn and the Lord King (also 
in their robes), the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, Garter King of Arms 
and Earl Marshal, and the Deputy Lord Great Chamberlain preceding. His 
lordship laid down the patent upon the Chair of State, kneeling, and from 
thence took and delivered it to the clerk, who read the same at the table, which 
bears date the 25th day of April, in the eighth year of his present Majesty ; 
wherel)y is granted to his lordship and the heirs male of his body tlie style and 
title of Baron Lyudhurst of Lyndhurst, in tlie County of Southampton. (Writ 
of Summons read.) 

"Then his lordship, at the table, took the oaths, and made and subscribed 
the declaration, and also made and subscribed the oath of abjuration pursuant 
to the statutes ; and was afterwards placed on the lower end of the Barons' 
bench, and from thence went to the upper end of the Earls' bench, and sat 
there as Lord Chancellor, and llicn relumed to the woolsack." 

t A.D. 185:j. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 53 

Speaker in the absence of tlie Lord Chancellor, was granted. CHAP. 
This practice being objected to by several peers as irregular ' 

and unconstitutional, Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst delivered a.d. 1827. 
his maiden speech in defence of it. After showing the im- 
mense number of Scotch appeals pending, he said — " he could 
not devote his own time to them without injury to the suitors 
in the Court of Chancery. It was indispensably necessary 
that the Chancellor should sit two days a week in the House 
of Lords, to hear English and Irish appeals. This arrange- 
ment would give him four days for the Court of Chancery — 
which, he trusted, would be sufficient to keep down the busi- 
ness of that court. If their Lordships would grant him the 
indulgence which he asked, he pledged himself, before the 
next session, to perfect a plan with reference to his court 
which should secure the performance of its duties, regularly, 
faithfully, and efficiently."* 

This pledge smoothed over the difficulty ; but it never was 
redeemed.f 

On the other occasion of his speaking while Chancellor He supports 
under Canning, he sliowed the liberal tendency which always teis' Mar- 
guided him when he was not biassed by some interested 
or party motive. A bill was pending, which I had after- 
wards the satisfaction of carrying through Parliament, for 
allowing the marriages of Protestant Dissenters, who had 
conscientious objections to parts of the marriage service in 
the English liturgy, to be celebrated in their own places of 
religious worship and before their own pastors. This bill 
was of course opposed by Lord Eldon; and he denounced 
certain Bishops who approved of it as little better than 
infidels. But the new Lord Chancellor supported it very 
powerfully, shewing that, till the Council of Trent, no 
religious ceremony nor intervention of a priest was necessary 
to constitute a valid marriage in any part of Europe ; that to 
prohibit the King's subjects from contracting this relation 
without violating their conscience, was an infringement of 
their civil and religious rights, and that all the State could 

* 17 Hansard, N. S., 574. 

t In his last Chancellorship I myself sat for him two days a week ; but this 
was less objectionable, as I was a member of the House. 



riaoje Bill, 



54 



EEIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 



CHAP. 
/ IV. 



A.D. 1827. 



Reasons for 
his being 
very quiet 
while Can- 
ning was 
Minister. 



Aug. 10, 
1827. 



Lord Gode- 
rich Prime 
Minister. 



justly enjoin respecting tlie ceremony of marriage, was that 
it be simple, certain, and capable of easy proof. He forcibly 
dwelt upon the impolicy of making the Establishment odious 
to a large class of the community, and concluded by 
observing that the measure would be a relief almost as much 
to the Church as to the Dissenters.* He consented, however, 
that the bill should stand over till another session. 

It w^as thought cowardly in the Chancellor not to defend 
more strenuously his chief against the combined efforts of 
the Duke of Wellington and Lord Grey. The latter, not- 
withstanding his generally patriotic career, was on this 
occasion particularly vulnerable; for, although Canning was 
decidedly liberal both in his foreign and domestic policy, 
and was suj^ported by Brougham and many Liberals, he w^as 
bitterly attacked by the avowed leader of the Whigs, 
apparently from the dread of being deserted by all the rest 
of the party. But the Chancellor quickly perceived that, 
with any exertion he could make to save it, the present 
Government could not last long, and he did not like to 
incur the enmity of those w^ho would probably have to con- 
struct a new cabinet. 

Even if Canning had lived, the combination against him 
would probably have been too strong to be resisted. Upon 
his lamented death it w^as seen that either the Duke of 
AVellington or Lord Grey must soon be Prime Minister. 

Lyndhurst openly laughed at the scheme of setting up 
Lord Goderich as the nominal head of a government. Con- 
curring in the freak of gazetting him as First Lord of the 
Treasury, yet, in prospect of the inevitable change at hand, 
the long-headed Chancellor laboured to ingratiate himself 
with the King and those about the Court who were likely 
to have influence in the formation of the new arrange- 
ments. 

How he was conducting himself in the mean time as a 
Judge in the Court of Chancery I must reserve for a future 
opportunity, when I shall deliberately discuss his judicial 
character. For the present it is enough to say that he 



* 17 Ilansni-a, X. S., HIS. 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHURST. OD 

sliewed capacity for becoming one of tlie greatest magistrates CHAP, 
who ever filled the marble chair, but, alas! at the same ' 



time, utter indifference about his future judicial fame, — a.d, i82i 
doing as little business as he could without raising a loud 
clamour against him, shirking difficult questions which came 
before him in his originail jurisdiction, and affirming in 
almost every appeal — satisfied with himself if he could steer 
clear of serious blunders, and escape from public animad- 
version. 

Some of the duties of Chancellor he performed with vigour 
and eclat. Soon after he received the Great Seal he brought 
out a numerous batch of King's counsel, including all those 
whom Lord Eldon had long so improperly kept back ; and, 
further, he gave dinners in the most splendid style, heighten- 
ing the effect of the artistic performances of his French cook 
and Italian confectioner by his own wit and convivial powers. 
It was rumoured that his band of attendants at table was 
sometimes swelled by sheriff's officers put into livery, there 
being frequent executions in his house ; but I believe that 
for these stories, so generally circulated, there was no suffi- 
cient foundation. Notwithstanding all his gains as Attorney 
and Solicitor General, he certainly was poor ; for his private 
j)ractice had not been very profitable, and he spent money 
as fast as he earned it. But I have heard him declare that 
he never had incurred debts which he had not the means 
of satisfying. 

Lord Goderich (or " poor Goody," as the Chancellor called 
him) ere long lost his head altogether. His wisest act was 
the announcement of his own incapacity. Parliament was 
summoned for the middle of January ; and he sat down to ^■^' 1828. 
compose the King's speech, without being able to make any 
progress in it. No wonder, for he could not determine in his 
own mind wath respect to any measure to be recommended, 
or any opinion to be expressed on any public question, 
domestic or foreign, which then engaged the public attention. 
He was particularly puzzled about the charp-cter to be given 
to tlie battle of Navarino, wliich his illustrious successor 
thought fit to call an " untoward event." But when he had 
got over several of these difficulties he was driven to commit 



56 



EEIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 



CHAP. 
IV. 



A.D. 1828. 

Resignation 
of Lord 
Goderich. 



suicide by a paltry difference between two of his subordinates, 
which, upon an appeal to him, he was unable to adjust. 

Late at night, on the 6th of January, he came to Lord 
Lyndhurst in a state of great agitation, and for some minutes 
walked about the room wringing his hands, without uttering 
any articulate sound. At last he exclaimed, " I deem it due 
to you to let the Lord Chancellor know that I have made up 
my mind to resign immediately." An explanation taking 
place, it turned out that, in reality, no new disaster had 
happened. The Chancellor tried to reassure him, and to 
advise him to meet Parliament, saying, that " after all, the 
session might pass off smoothly, and, at any rate, it would be 
more dignified to fall by an adverse vote than to tumble- down 
with a confession of incapacity." He attempted no answer, 
but mopped the perspiration from his brows with his handker- 
chief, as he was used to do in debate when his ideas became 
very confused. He now merely said that his resolution was 
irrevocable, and that what he feared was to break the matter 
to the King, who must be much perplexed by being called 
upon to change his cabinet a few days before the meeting of 
Parliament. "As far as that goes," said the Chancellor, 
*' instead of your writing a letter to his Majesty (about which 
there might be some awkwardness), if you do not like to face 
him in a private audience, I don't mind accompanying you to 
Windsor." This offer was joyfully accepted, and by a 
dexterous stroke of policy the Chancellor became master of 
the position which gave him the power of forming the new 
administration. 

Next day they proceeded to Windsor together. The King 
had been prepared for their visit by reason of a secret com- 
munication to liis private secretary, who was a fast friend 
of the Chancellor, and his Majesty received them very 
graciously and accepted the resignation. "But," said lie, 
'* rather addressing himself to the Chancellor, "I ought 
to ask your advice about tlie person I ouglit to send for 
to consult about the formation of a new administration." 
" Sir," said the Chancellor, *' I venture to mention the name 
wliicli must liave already presented itself to the mind of 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 57 

your Majesty, tlie Duke of Wellington." King. — "Let him ^^^^• 
come to me as soon as possible." Lord Lyndhurst, in ' 



relating the particulars of this conference, avers that his a.d. 1828. 
Majesty added, " But, remember, whoever is to be Minister, Formation 
you, my lord, must remain my Chancellor." One would have ^^ WeiHcg-*^ 
thought it more probable that this appointment should have ton's admi- 
been suggested by the Duke of Wellington, when commis- 
sioned to submit to his Majesty the list of a new administra- 
tion. Nevertheless it is certain that Lord Lyndhurst's Lord Lynd- 
retention of the Great Seal was absolutely determined upon ^inueV^^" 
very early in the negotiation for the new ministry, although Chancellor. 
this was carefully concealed for a fortnight from Lord Eldon, 
who, during the whole of that time, was impatiently ex- 
pecting a summons to resume his former office. When he 
read in the newspapers the list of the new ministry, with 
" Lord Lyndhicrst, Chancelloe," at the head of it, he was 
furious. He wrote to his daughter, — " A lady, probably, has 
had something to do with it ; " but he added, " My opinions 
may have had something to do with it." In truth, the Duke 
of Wellington, entertaining a great respect for Lord Eldon, 
and as yet knowing little of Lord Lyndhurst which he much 
liked, was shrewd enough to perceive (although he had then 
formed no distinct plan of concessions either to Dissenters 
or to Koman Catholics) that a Cabinet could stand no longer 
with a sturdy and conscientious member in it, who thought that 
all the antiquated principles of the ultra-Toryism generated 
by the French Eevolution must be religiously adhered to. 
Lyndhurst had at times made speeches in a spirit quite as 
intolerant, but he was known to be more ojpen to conviction. 
Peel, who was to be leader of the House of Commons, dreaded 
still more than the Duke of Wellington the incumbrance of 
Lord Eldon, of whose blind resistance to all change he had 
complained under Lord Liverpool. Still, Peel had more 
scruples than the Duke of Wellington in agreeing to Lord 
Lyndhurst being Chancellor, for he had enjoyed better 
opportunities of marking his career, and he reposed no con- » 

fidence in his sincerity. It is a curious fact, that, although 
Lyndhurst and Peel sat together in the Cabinet so long, and. 



58 EEIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 

CHAP, after the formation of the Duke of Wellington's Government, 

never had an open difference, even down to the repeal of the 

A.D. 1828. corn laws ; — they always entertained a considerable personal 

dislike of each other, which they took very little pains to 

conceal. 

Lord LynJ- The Chancellor noAV filled a larger space in the public eye 

the Duke than at any former time. He was reputed to have had the 

of Welling- principal hand in forming the new Government, and he had 

ceiior. high credit for his address in contriving to hold the Great 

Seal nnder three premiers in one year. It was supposed that 

he might be a little embarrassed by the new view to be taken 

of Turkish politics, and of the battle of Kavarino, which had 

been hailed as a glorious victory; but w^hen the 29th of 

January came, he, as one of the Lords Commissioners wdio 

addressed the two Houses of Parliament in his Majest3^'s 

name, read the following passage without any faltering in his 

voice or blush upon his cheek : — 

" Notwithstanding the valour displayed by the combinjed fleet, 
His Majesty deeply laments that this conflict should have oc- 
curred with the naval force of an ancient ally; but he still 
entertains a confident hope that this untoward event will not be 
followed by farther hostilities." 

He concurs Tlio great moasure of this Session w^as Lord John Eussell's 
peal of the Bill for repealing the Corporation and Test Acts, to which 
Corporation gj^. }^obert Pccl had assented on behalf of the Government in 

and iest 

Acts. the House of Commons. When it came up to the Lords it 

was strongly opposed by Lord Eldon ; but as his arguments 
w^ere chiefly drawn from Lord Lyndhurst's famous anti- 
Catholic speech in the House of Commons, Avhen he Avas 
Master of the Bolls, and did not now make much impression, 
the refutation of that speech by Lord Lyndhurst was 
reserved for another opportunity. 

In the committee on the bill, a discussion arose upon the 
declaration substituted for the sacramental test, — a declara- 
tion whicli, I think, ought to have been omitted altogether; 
for it lias been of no service whatever to the Church, — being 
superfluous if meant to be confined to obedience to existing 
law, and clearly not binding if meant to extend to future 
legislation. Lord Eklon having proposed an amendment 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 59 

of the declaration which would have confined the benefit of CHAP, 
the bill to Protestants, the Chancellor accused him of " exer- ' 



cising his talents, his zeal, and his influence mischievously a.d. 1828. 
in thus trying to defeat the bill." 

Lord Eldon. — " Strange that such a charge should be brought 
against me, and from such a quarter ! I have served my country 
to the best of my abilities, and, if I am now engaged in anything 
calculated to be mischievous, I pray God that I may be forgiven. 
I cast back the imputation which has been sought to be thrown 
upon my conduct by the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, 
with all the scorn of a man who feels himself injured." 

Before long, the Marquis of Lansdowne brought forward 9th June. 
" Catholic emancipation," in the shape of a resolution that 
"it is expedient to consider the laws affecting our Koman 
Catholic fellow subjects, with a view to such a conciliatory 
adjustment as might be conducive to the peace and strength 
of the United Ejiigdom." This policy was as yet disagreeable 
to the Government, and was therefore opposed by the Chan- He again 
cellor, who strenuously contended that our constitution was caKic 
made essentially Protestant at the Eevolution of 1688 ; and emancipa- 
he justified all the laws then passed for that purpose. Having 
thus established his premises, he then asked : — " What change 
had taken place in the position or condition of Ireland which 
required that the conduct of this country should be altered 
towards the Catholics of Ireland ? It was too true there 
were persons in Ireland exercising a sway and authority 
which was altogether unknown to the constitution. They 
demanded for the Catholics of Ireland admission to seats in 
this Protestant House; they demanded admission to offices 
of State, thereby rendering this House no longer a Pro- 
testant House of Peers, and the Government no longer a 
Protestant Government. Exercising the best judgment he 
could, he did not think that the concessions now demanded 
would have the effect of tranquillizing Ireland. For the last 
seven years the priesthood had increased its authority there 
to a degree unprecedented, and this would only be increased 
and rendered more dangerous by the concessions which were 
meditated. As long as this religion continued to be the 



60 



KEIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 



CHAP. 
IV. 



A.D. 1829. 



Sudden 
resolution 
of the 
Govern- 
ment that 
CathoHc 
emancipa- 
tion should 
be granted. 



Lord Lynd- 
hurst con- 
curs. 



5th Feb. 



He delivers 
the royal 
speech re- 
commend- 
ing Catholic 
emancijta- 
tion. 



religion of Ireland, no such concessions could succeed in 
composing that agitated country."* 

The motion was negatiyed by a majority of forty-four, and 
the subject was not again debated during that session. 

But, before Parliament met again, the Government (in- 
cluding Lord Lyndhurst) had resolved that, although the 
Eoman Catholic religion continued the religion of Ireland, 
the fatal concessions should be granted. I do not think that 
the Chancellor was at all consulted before the measure of 
Catholic emancipation was finally determined upon by the 
Duke of Wellington and Sir Eobert Peel ; but when it was 
mentioned to him he very readily acquiesced in it. Not only 
was he influenced by the consideration that if he did not 
acquiesce he must resign the Great Seal, but I make no 
doubt that he inwardly approved of the new policy of the 
Government. It was, to be sure, a sudden change for him, 
and he was more obnoxious to the charge of interested con- 
version than Lis anti>Catholic colleagues : for they had always, 
from early youth till now, been of the same opinion, and it 
was admitted that hitherto they had entertained that opinion 
with sincerity ; while his apparent bigotry had been recently 
assumed. Whatever his motives or his reasoning with him- 
self might be, he at once became a zealous emancipationist — 
nor did he recoil from or much dread the invectives, the 
taunts, and the sarcasms to which he knew he must be exposed, 
— prepared to turn them off with a laugh, and boldly to 
retaliate on all who should assail him. 

In the royal speech, at the openmg of the memorable 
Session of 1829, he, on behalf of his Majesty, after com- 
plaining of the Catholic Association and asking for powers 
to put it down, thus proceeded in a firm tone and with a 
steady aspect: — "His Majesty recommends that, when this 
essential object shall have been accomplished, you should 
take into your deliberate consideration the whole condition 
of Ireland, and that you should review the laws which 
impose civil disabilities on his Majesty's Ivomau Catholic 
subjects." 

While the Catholic Relief Bill was making progi'ess in the 



* 19 Hansard, N. t<., 1210. 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUEST. 61 

House of Commons, there were, from the commencement of jy 
the Session, nightly skirmishes in the House of Lords on the 



presentation of petitions for and against the measure, a.d. 1829. 
The Chancellor sometimes mixed in these, and received Skirmishes 
painful scratches. Lord Eldon, presenting an anti-Catholic Eidon. 
petition from the Company of Tailors at Glasgow, the Chan- 
cellor, still sitting on the woolsack, said in a stage whisper, 
loud enough to be heard in the galleries : — '* What ! do 
tailors trouble themselves with such measures f " 

Lord Eldon. — "My noble and learned friend might have 
been aware that tailors cannot like turncoats^ [A loud 
laugh]. 

On a subsequent day, the Chancellor charged Lord Eldon 
with insidiously insinuating, when presenting petitions against 
the Eoman Catholics, that they were not loyal subjects, and 
that they were unwilling to swear that they would support 
the Protestant succession to the Crown. 

Lord Eldon. — -"My Lords, I am not in the habit of in- 
sinuating — what I think, I avow. And, my Lords, I am an 
open, not an insidious enemy, when I feel it my duty to 
oppose any measure or any man. My character, known 
to my country for more than fifty years, is, I feel, more 
than sufficient to repel so unfounded a charge. It is equally 
unnecessary that I should criticise the career of my ac- 
cuser. 

The grand struggle was in the debate upon the second Lord lynd- 
reading of the bill. Lord Eldon's friends wished to give brateV^^^" 
him the advantage of following his rival, whom they at last speech in 
forced up by personal appeals to him. No man in a delibera- Catholic 
tive assembly was ever placed in a more trying position, for ^manapa- 
he really rose to answer Dr. Philpotts's pamphlet against answer to 
the measure — which pamphlet he himself had spoken very blateV' 
recently in the other House of Parliament. He acquitted ^P^^^^^ 
himself very dexterously by abstaining from any professions Catholic 
of sincerity, by quietly trying to show that he had been a ^l^n"^'^*^" 
very consistent politician, by assuming a tone of ribakhy, and 
by bringing a charge of inconsistency against Lord Eldon, 
who often proclaimed himself, and was generally considered 

* 20 Hansard, N. S., 1827. 



62 REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, fjy others, if one of the most bigoted, at all events the most 
' consistent of all living politicians. 

A.D. 1829. "If," said the Chancellor, "after the gracious recommendation 
from the Throne at the commencement of the Session — if, after 
this Bill has passed through the other House of Parliament, 
with a majority so commanding, expressing, in a manner so 
marked and decided, the opinion of the representative body of 
the nation ; if, after this, owing to an}^ circumstance, the Bill do 
not pass and become part of the law of the land, it is impossible 
that the fii'mest mind or the stoutest heart can contemplate the 
consequences without something approaching to dismay. The 
noble and learned Lord at the table — I call him the noble and 
learned Lord, because he has declared that he will not allow me 
to call him my noble and learned friend — directed me on a former 
night to vindicate my consistency. My Lords, I readily accept 
the challenge." 

He then stoutly asserted that he had never attacked the 
principle of Catholic emancipation, and that he had always 
declared that it was a question of expediency, — the Catholics 
having an equal right with Protestants to the enjoyment of 
all civil rights, if such equality would not endanger the con- 
stitution. Feeling that this was a ticklish topic, and ob- 
serving soine sceptical smiles and shrugs, notwithstanding 
the extreme gravity and decorum ever preserved among 
their Lordships, he rapidly passed on to a supposed charge 
against him, which he feigned for the purpose of answering 
it — of having violated the oath he had taken truly to counsel 
the King." 

Said he : "I have deeply considered the obligation this oath 
has imposed upon me, and, after mucili deliberation, the result 
has been that I came to a firm conclusion in my own mind that 
if the stability of the empire were to me, as it ought to be, an 
object of deep and intense interest, Ireland must bo tranquillized, 
and that it was impossible for me not to give the counsel which 
I have given to my Sovereign. Have I then violated the oath I 
took? Yet the most bitter opprobrium has been cast upon me. I 
have been assailed by revilings in the most unmeasured and in 
the coarsest tenns, because I wish to put an end to the grievous 
discontents which have so long prevailed in Ireland. Since I 
recently became a responsible adviser of the C'own, I have 
possessed the means of arriving at information which I did not 



A.D. 1829. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 63 

before possess, and wliich has enabled me to discbarge my duty CHAP, 
as a faithful counsellor. But the noble and learned Lord at the 
table had been twenty-five years the responsible adviser of 
the Crown, with the same means of information — during all that 
time he saw the distracted state of Ireland and he applied no 
remedy to the evil. He did not suggest any considerate line 
of policy which was suitable to the manifold disorders of that 
afflicted country ; and now he assails that which is brought for- 
ward by his successors. He was contented to sit in a divided 
cabinet that could not fairly consider the Catholic question, and 
whose resolve, as a body, was to grant no further concession 
to the Catholics. This, I think, was acting contrary to the 
peace of the country, and contrary to the principles of the consti- 
tution. I allow that, before the noble and learned Lord was a 
member of the Cabinet, he supported measures for the relief of 
the Catholics of Ireland, which might have given a much 
greater alarm to Protestantism than the Bill now proposed ; for 
this Bill only completes, with a small addition, the system then 
begun. 

" While he was Attorney General in 1791 and 1792, all 
disabilities, with a trifling exception, were suddenly removed 
from Roman Catholics; they were allowed to become magis- 
trates; the army and navy, and all professions, were thrown 
open to them ; and the elective franchise was conferred upon 
them. The noble and learned Lord was a member of the 
Cabinet when a measure, on which he had turned out the Whigs 
in 1806, quietly passed, for allowing the highest military com- 
missions to be held by Eoman Catholic officers. The noble 
Lord should not be envious of seeing fully accomplished the 
work which he so auspiciously had begun and carried for- 
ward. 

" The noble and learned Lord's fears are vain ; for Catholics 
sat in both Houses long after the Eeformation, without any 
danger to the reformed faith. This is proved by a speech of 
Colonel Birch, who in the course of his argument in the House 
of Commons, in the reign of Charles IL, said, * Will you at one 
step turn out of hoth Houses of Parliament so many members f ' 
evidently alluding to the Roman Catholics. I state this as one 
of the many facts that never were disputed, to show that the 
lioman Catholics sat in Parliament under our Protestant Go- 
vernment." 

Lord Eldon. " Did the noble and learned Lord know that last 
year ?" 



64 REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP. Cliancellor. " I confess that I did not : but my Lords, I have 

' since been prosecuting my studies ; I have advanced in know- 

AD 1829 1^^&*3; ^"^^' ^^ ^y li^rnble opinion, even the noble and learned 
Lord might improve himself in the same way." 

This sally set the house in a roar ; and being understood 
as a good-humoured abandonment of character, procured a 
favourable hearing for the Chancellor during the rest of his 
speech. This speech for the Catholics was as able as that 
which he had delivered against them, although he was said 
to be " pitching it too strong," when he urged that emanci- 
pation would bring about a conversion of the Catholics to the 
reformed faith, which he so dearly loved. He thus con- 
cluded : — 

" I care not for the personal obloquy which may be cast upon 
me for advocating this measure; I have discharged my duty 
fearlessly and conscientiously^ and to the best of my ability, aud 
my most anxious desire, as it would be my greatest consolation, 
is to be associated with your Lordships in carrying this Bill into 
a law, and thereby to secure upon a permanent basis the happi- 
ness and tranquillity of the United Kingdom." 

Lord Lord Eldon. "I ceased to call the noble and learned Lord 

Eldon's de- qj^ ^^q woolsack mij nolle and learned friend, because he accused 
own con- 1^6 of " disingenuous insinuations,'' — language which I felt to be 
sistency. extremely disrespectful. But if the noble Lord can reconcile 
himself in the House of Commons with himself as a member of 
your Lordships' House, I am read}^ to be reconciled to him, and 
to forget all that has passed. I feel, in making these remarks, 
that there is a sort of indecorum in such a dispute between a 
Chancellor and an Ex-Chancellor; but I cannot refrain from 
expressing my astonishment that the noble and learned Lord 
should attempt to show that he himself had been consistent by 
preferring a charge of inconsistency against rao. I have read the 
speech of the noble and learned Lord delivered a few months 
ago in the House of Commons, and from that speech I have 
drawn all the arguments I have used in this Hout-c against the 
repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, and against what is 
called " the Catholic Kolief Bill." Since that speech of the 
lionourable and learned Lord, there has been no change in the 
circumsl ancles of the country, although there is a great change in 
tho circumstances of the noblo and learned Lord. His sudden 
conversion may be sincere and disinterested, but surely ho is 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHTJRST. 65 

not the man to taunt me with inconsistency. Laying my CHAP, 
account with obloquy while I was in office, I hoped to have IV. 
escaped it when I retired into private life, but I regret to find 
that it is still thought a pleasant thing in Parliament to have a 
slash at the ex-Chancellor." * 



AD. 1829. 



The bill was passed by a large majority, and we all laughed 
very much at the ex-Chancellor's fears and prophecies. I by 
no means regret what was then done ; and with a perfect 
foreknowledge of all that has since happened, I would still 
have taken the same course ; but I am sorry to say that we 
have not derived from the measure all the benefits which 
reasonable men expected from it, and some colour has been 
given to the objections of its opponents. Many Koman 
Catholics in Ireland, not contented with equality, have aimed 
at ascendency, and have shown that with power they would 
be intolerant, denying to others the religious liberty which 
they had so loudly claimed for themselves. But we can 
now resist Eoman Catholic aggression more effectually than 
if we had continued liable to the reproach of tyranny and 
oppression. 

Lord Lyndhurst at last carried through his bill for improv- 
ing the procedure of the Court of Chancery, and the session 
closed. Government had seemed very strong in both houses, 
but Lord Lyndhurst declared that he bad great apprehen- 
sions for the future. The party of the Tories, to which he 
had attached himself, was rent asunder ; a large section of 
them were eager for revenge upon the authors of the Eman- 
cipation Bill at any price, and the cry resounded JVusquam 
tiita fides. Still the Whigs were in sad disrepute, and 
George IV., who had been for many years their leader, and l^eath of 
under whom they had expected to enjoy uninterrupted sway, june 20, 
closed his career as Kegent and as King without once having 
admitted them to office. 

A session of Parliament had been begun on the 4th of 
February, 1830, but nothing of much interest occurred in it, 
for his Majesty was understood to be labouring under a 
mortal malady, and parties were preparing their measures and 

♦ 21 Hansard, N. S., lUO. 
VOL. VIII. F 



1830. 



66 EEIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 

CHAP, mustering their forces with a view to a new reign. The cur- 
. rent now running powerfully towards law reform, the Chan- 



A.D. 1830. cellor proposed several schemes for mitigating the severity of 

the criminal code, and for improving the procedure of the 

courts of equity and common law ; but the only bill of any 

importance which passed was that which he introduced to 

authorize the use of a stamp instead of the King's sign 

manual for the purpose of testifying the King's assent to acts 

of state. The Cliancellor took the opportunity to lament very 

tenderly the necessity for such a departure from constitutional 

form on account of his Majesty's extreme bodily weakness ; and 

he was no doubt very sincere on this occasion, for he had been 

a marked favourite at Court ever since his famous speech 

against Queen Caroline, and the inclinations of the heir to 

the throne were now supposed to be rather in favour of the 

party in opposition. 

Mistake of Prudent management might have saved the existing Go- 

Weiiin<Tton ^^ernmeut. The ultra Tories were exceedingly hostile to it; 

in courting but many of the Whigs w^ere disposed, to support it, and, 

of the ultra witli a fcw coucessious to public opinion, it might have per- 

Toiies in- mauentlv stood. William IV". was contented with the Duke 

stead of the / 

moderate of Wellington and Peel, and neither expressed nor felt any 
desire for a change. 

It has ever been a wonder to me that Lyndhurst, who well 
knew the state of the popular mind, and who himself in- 
wardly approved of liberal measures, should not have striven 
to induce the Duke of Wellington to accept the aid of that 
party who had enabled him to carry Catholic emancii^ation. 
The Duke thought that any further concession would be 
mischievous ; and his ill-judged policy now was, by assuming 
a high Tory tone, to win back those who had been alienated 
from him by his removal of the disabilities of the l.^issentei'S 
and the lioman Catholics. In this policy the Lord Chancellor 
implicitly acquiesced. He abstained from making any public 
declanitions by which ho might afterwards bo ham})ered ; but 
in private ho admitted the oxtn-mo diJliculty which any 
Governmont must oncount) r in now trying to resuscitate the 
doctrines oi" jW/^/cvif^ ojduniKm. 

Although \x\)o\\ a dissolution of I*aiiiament the elections 



Lord Chan- 
cellor Lyncl- 
hurst ap- 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 67 

ran considerably in favour of the Whigs, still the Iron Duke's CHAP, 
resolution was maintained to set them at defiance. ' 

One symptom of a liberal tendency was at this time openly a.d. 183u. 
exhibited by Lyndhurst. He always declared the doctrine, 
and acted upon it, that the holder of the Great Seal has the 
exclusive right of appointing the puisne judges, and ought points all 
proprio marte to take the pleasure of the Sovereign upon Ldm 0?^ 
their appointment, without any communication with the i^isown 
Prime Minister or any other of his colleagues. Two years 
before, although a notorious Whig, I had been placed at the 
head of the Keal Property Commission. This was Peel's 
doing: but now Lyndhurst, in a very handsome manner, September. 
addressed to me a laudatory epistle, offering to make me a 
puisne judge of the Court of King's Bench. I had recently 
been returned to the House of Commons for the borouo'h of 
Stafford, and, from my position at the bar, 1 was not pre- 
pared to be so shelved. But I was nevertheless obliged to 
him, and I accompanied my refusal of the offer with very 
warm thanks for his kindness. 

The public remained in suspense as to the policy of the 
government till the delivery of the King's speech on the 
opening of the session, and the inference drawn from this was 
fatally confirmed by the Duke of Wellington's memorable 
declaration that the existing state of parliamentary representa- 
tion did not require and did not admit of any improvement. 
The ultra-Tories were in no degree appeased, and they loudly 
vociferated that they would sooner see in office men who had 
always consistently supported Whiggism than men who had 
treacherously paltered with their vows to defend Church and 
King. The Duke of Wellington's government was therefore Nov. 15. 
doomed to destruction, and it ingloriously fell by a division 
on a trifling motion in the House of Commons for a committee 
to inquire into the expenditure of the civil list. 



F 2 



68 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAPTEK V. 

LORD CHIEF BAEON. 
January, 1831 — November, 1834. 

CHAP. Lyndhurst, who had already been Chancellor under three 

' successive premiers holding very opposite opinions, was not 

A.D. 1830. without hopes that he might have continued to hold his 

Intrigue for officc Under a fourth, and he would have been very ready 

continuing ^^ coalcsce with the new Whiff Government, pleadinor as his 

Lyndhurst ^° , . 

as Chan- excusc that it was to comprise his old chief Lord Goderich, 
Lord^cTey!^ now Earl of Kipon, the Duke of Kichmond, who had been 
a conspicuous Tory, and the once Tory Lord Palmerston, 
with other associates of Canning. Strange to say. Lord Grey 
was by no means disinclined to this arrangement. He ex- 
pressed high respect for the talents of the Duke of Welling- 
ton's Chancellor — particularly as displayed in his exposition 
of the Kegency Bill, which was still pending in the House, 
and which '^ it was desirable that he should carry through." 
]s'ov. 15 -^^^^^ ^^^^ Lord Lyndhurst had introduced in the House of 
Lords the very same night in which tlie disastrous division 
had taken place in the House of Commons on the Civil List. 
The object of it was to make the Duchess of Kent Kegent in 
case William IV. should die before the Princess Victoria, then 
heir presumptive to the crown, and only twelve years old, 
should have completed her eighteenth year. 

In laying it on the table the Chancellor certainly did take 
a most masterly view of the constitutional law ujion the 
subject, — illustrated by very interesting allusions to what 
liad been done in this and other countries on similar occa- 
sions, lie likewise alluded, with much delicacy, to the 
contingency of the Queen being enceinte at the death of 
the King, and giving birth to a child after the Princess 
Victoria should be placed upon the throne. However, there 
was little dill'ercuce of opinion as to the fitness of the 



Kov. 17. 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUEST. 69 

measure ; and it might easily have been carried through its CHAP, 
subsequent stages, even if it had been opposed by its versatile ' 

author. Lord Grey's real motive, I believe, was, that he a.d. 1830. 
might avoid handing over the G-reat Seal to Brougham, of 
whose temerity and insubordination he had a most distressing- 
anticipation. Some alleged that, not insensible in old age 
to the influence of female charms, the venerable AVhig Earl 
had been captivated by the beauty and lively manners of 
Lady Lyndhurst, and that her bright eyes were new argu- 
ments shot against a transfer of the Great Seal. However Brougham 
this may be, it is certain that he offered Brougham the office anTobtainT 
of Attorney General, meaning to soften the proposal with an ^^^ Great 
enumeration of some of the illustrious men who had held the 
office, and a representation of the importance to the new 
Government that the newly elected member for the county 
of York should remain in the House of Commons. But 
Brougham burst away from Lord Grey with indiguation; 
and, this being the very day fixed, by a notice which he had 
given in the House of Commons before the Duke of Welling- 
ton's resignation, for his motion on parliamentary reform, he 
hurried down to St. Stephen's with the determination of 
immediately bringing it on. As such a step would have 
destroyed the new Government while yet in embryo, he was 
earnestly entreated to desist from his purpose; and he 
yielded, but making use of language which clearly indicated 
that he would only consent to become a supporter of Lord 
Grey's administration on his own terms : — 

" I beg it to be understood that what I do, I do in deference to 
the wishes of the House. And farther, as no change that can take place 
in the administration can by any possibility affect me, I beg to be under- 
stood that, in putting off the motion, I will put it off until the 
25th of this month and no longer. I will then, and at no more 
distant period, bring forward the question of parliamentary 
reform, whatever may be the condition of circumstances, and ichosoever 
may be his Majesty's Ministers.'' * 

I know not if Lord Grey exclaimed, as I once heard him 
do upon a similar " flare up " of the same person, " The fat is 

* Hansard, i. 5G2. Hencefortli tlie 3rJ series of HaDsard is to be under- 
stood as quoted. 



70 



KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 



A.D. 1830. 

Nov. '12. 



Lyndhurst 
becomes 
Lord Chief 
Baron of 
the Court 
of Ex- 
chequer. 



all in the fire ;" but he instantly renounced all nation of 
Lyndhurst being his Chancellor, and before " the 25th of the 
month," when the question of Parliamentary Reform was 
without fail to have been brought forward in the House of 
Commons by the honourable member for the county of York, 
" tvhosoeuer might he his Majesty's Ministers'' the Eight 
Honourable Henry Lord Brougham and Yaux took his seat 
on the woolsack in the House of Lords. 

Still, the object of attaching the Tory ex-Chancellor to the 
Whig Government was by no means abandoned. He was 
asked by the new Premier to continue to take charge of the 
Eegency Bill, with many compliments to his eloquence and 
ability, wdiich were very complacently received. A scheme 
was soon after devised and carried out, which it was thought 
would take off all danger of Lyndhurst 's active opposition, if 
he should not be quite contented with liis new position. 
Alexander, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, w^as asked to 
resign. He was willing to do so on condition of having a 
peerage, to which he had no just pretension. This would 
have caused some scandal; and a hint was thrown out to 
Alexander, by a friend of the new Government, that some 
notice was threatened in the House of Commons of his 
unfitness to continue on the bench by reason of his age and 
infirmities. Alexander thereupon agreed to resign uncon- 
ditionally; and his office w^as offered to Lyndhurst. Hitherto 
there never had been an instance of a Lord Chancellor or 
Lord Keeper, after resigning the Great Seal, becoming a 
common law Judge ; but there was no objection to it in 
point of law, nor would the supposed breach of etiquette be 
blamed by any one whose opinion was worth regarding. 
Lyndhurst had sufficient confidence in his own powers to 
support his dignity ; and the offer of a place for life, with 
a salary of 7000^. a year, was very tempting to him, for, 
although lie could contrive to prevent executions being put 
into his house, he was exceedingly poor, and the retired 
allowance for a Chancellor was then only 4000/. a year, — an 
income quite inadequate to support Lady Lyndhurst s fashion- 
able establishment. Accordingly, on the first day of Hilary 
Term, 1831, the ex-Chancellor took his seat on the Bench 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHURST. 71 

as Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer. I ought to state CHAP, 
that, accepting this office, he gave no pledge whatever to ' 



support Lord Grey's goyernment. Iso doubt great disap- j^-^^ 1831. 
pointment was felt when he suddenly became the leader of 
the Opposition in the House of Lords ; but in all the bitter 
struggles that followed, and amidst the many provocations 
he gave by the violent and unfair means he resorted to for 
the purpose of defeating the measures of the Whigs, I never 
heard, either in public or private, any taunt thrown out 
against him on the supposition that the course he took was 
contrary to good faith. 

He continued to preside in the Court of Exchequer four His high 
years, again showing that, if he had liked, he might have ^"orarnou-^ 
earned the very highest reputation for judicial excellence. I'^vw Judge. 
I did not regularly practise before him, but I often went 
into his court, particularly in revenue causes, after I became 
a law officer of the Crown, and as often I admired his 
wonderful quickness of apprehension, his forcible and logical 
reasoning, his skilful commixture of sound law and common 
sense, and his clear, convincing, and dignified judgments. 
He was a great favourite with the bar on account of his 
general courtesy, although he has told me that he acted 
upon the j)rinciple that " it is the duty of a Judge to make 
it disagreeable to counsel to talk nonsense." He regularly 
went circuits, saying that " he thought it pleasanter to try 
larcenies and highway robberies than to listen to seven 
Chancery lawyers on the same side upon exceptions to the 
Master's report." He declared that he was even pleased 
with what Judges generally find intolerable — the duty of 
receiving the country gentlemen at dinner, when the labours 
of the day are supposed to be over ; but he averred that he 
not only could make himself entertaining to them, but that 
he could make them entertaining to himself in return. 

Still he would not heartily give his mind to his judicial 
business. His opinion was, and is, of small weight in 
Westminster Hall; and I do not recollect any case being- 
decided on any judgment or dictum of his. It was only 
while he was in court that he cared for or thought of the 
causes he had to dispose of. The rest of liis time he spent 



72 



REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 

A.D. 1831. 



Queiy 
whether 
any excep- 
tion to his 
imparti- 
ality ? 



His wonder- 
ful power 
of memory 
exhibited 
iti the case 
of Small V. 
Attwood. 



in attending the debates of the House of Lords, or in forming 
cabals with his political partisans, or at the festal board. 
He had for a puisne Bayley, who, having been a Judge of 
the King's Bench, had come into the Exchequer, from being 
tired of Lord Tenterden. On this learned and laborious 
coadjutor Lyndhurst relied entirely. The pure law so 
supplied he knew how to extract from the quartz in which 
it was mixed up, and to exhibit as if he himself had dug it 
up resplendent from the mine, or had long held it in his 
private purse. 

I never suspected him of partiality, except on the trial of 
a cause of Dicas v. Lord Brougham. This was an unfounded 
action for false imprisonment, brought by a blackguard 
attorney against Lord Chancellor Brougham, at a time when 
there was a great enmity (followed by a strict friendship) 
between the noble defendant and the judge. I must say I 
thought the latter on this occasion showed a strong inclina- 
tion to push his rival into a scrape; but, if this inclination 
actually existed, it might have proceeded from a love of fun, 
rather than from rancour or malice. I myself was sued by 
the- same attorney, in the Court of Exchequer, for defamation 
in my speech against him as counsel for the defendant in 
this very cause, and I must confess I was rather uneasy at 
the thought of my trial coming on before the Lord Chief 
Baron, as I dreaded lest, to have a laugh against me, he 
might leave this question to the jury in such a way as to 
induce them to find a verdict against me. Luckily my 
antagonist had not the courage to proceed to trial, and at 
last I had *' judgment against him as in case of a nonsuit." 

In the time of Lord Chief Baron Lyndlnn-st the Exchequer 
was a court of equity as well as a court of law ; but the equity 
business was disposed of by a single judge, and, caring little 
about it, the Chief Baron generally handed it over to Mr. 
Baron Alderson. One equity case, however, ho was required 
to hear on account of its magnitude {Small v. Attwood), and it 
turned out heavier (in legal phrase) than any case ever 
tried in England ; for the hearing, from first to last, occupied 
a greater number of hours than the trial of Mr. Hastings. It 
arose out of a contract for the sale of iron-mines in the county 



LIFE OF LORD LTNDHURST. li 

of Stafford ; and the question was, wliether tlie contract was CHAP, 
not vitiated by certain alleged fraudulent representations of ' 



the vendor. The leading counsel had a brief, endorsed with a.d. 1831. 
a fee of 5000 guineas ; many days were occupied in reading 
the depositions, and weeks in the comments upon them. 
The Chief Baron paid unwearied attention to the evidence 
and the arguments, and at last delivered (by all accounts) the 
most wonderful judgment ever heard in Westminster Hall. 
It was entirely oral, and, without even referring to any notes, 
he employed a long day in stating complicated facts, in 
entering into complex calculations, and in correcting the 
misrepresentations of the counsel on both sides. Never once 
did he falter or hesitate, and never once was he mistaken in 
a name, a figure, or a date. Nevertheless, it was finally held 
that he had come to a wrong conclusion on the merits. The 
decree being that the contract was void, an appeal was 
brought in the House of Lords, the hearing of which lasted 
nearly a whole session. Time for consideration was taken till 
the following session ; and then Lord Cottenham, Chancellor, 
and Lord Brougham, ex-Chancellor, declared their opinion 
to be that the decree must be reversed. Lord Lyndhurst 
adhered to his original opinion, and defended it in a speech 
which again astounded all who heard it, by the unexampled 
power of memory and lucidness of arrangement by which it 
was distinguished. But this final judgment was not pro- 
nounced till many years after the era to which I had brought 
my narrative, — viz. the commencement of Lord Grey's ad- 
ministration, and to this I must now revert. 

It would appear that from the moment Lyndhurst was ap- Chief Baron 
pointed Chief Baron he had resolved to go into opposition, and ^.J^," ^^^^^^ 
I must confess that I think the Whigs were very silly in ex- ^^^oig 

,. mi/^joiii' •! n opposition. 

pectmg his support, ihe Great beal being m the grasp of 
one of them, who it was supposed must hold it as long as 
they were in power, no further promotion was open to the 
supposed new ally, except to the office of Chief Justice of 
the King's Bench. For this he would have been admirably 
well suited, and its increased salary would have pleased him ; 
but he shrunk from the heavy and responsible duties belong- 
ing to it, which he could not cast upon another, aud which 



74 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



The Refoi-m 
Bill in the 
House of 
Commons. 



CETAP. would Lave interfered, not only with his social enjoyment, but 
' with his political intrigues. There was a strong probability 
A.D. 1831. of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Eobert Peel being soon 
restored to office, for Lord Grey and his colleagues, at start- 
ing, by no means enjoyed public confidence, and they had 
committed som.e financial blunders which made it be sup- 
posed that their reign would be very short. Nor could it be 
said that honour forbade Lyndhurst to follow the course which 
interest pointed out to him, for, in accepting a purely judicial 
office, he could not be considered as changing liis politics, so 
as to entitle his former associates to renounce him as a rene- 
gade, or his new patrons to claim him as a convert. He was 
very moderate and reserved, however, till the Keform Bill 
was brought forward. Then he led, and thenceforth he long 
continued to lead, the most violent and factious opposition I 
have ever known or read of in our party annals. 

During the first half of the session he confined himself in 
the House of Lords to commenting upon certain bills pro- 
posed by the Lord Chancellor for reforming the Court of 
Chancery, and for establishing new local courts and a new 
Court of Bankruptcy — doing the best he could to disparage 
all these measures, but in a tone of great moderation and 
courtesy. Meanwhile, he was privately taken into council by 
the opponents of the Reform Bill, from its introduction 
into the House of Commons ; and they were chiefly guided 
by his advice till he committed a gross blunder, by which 
the bill was passed in the most obnoxious form given to it by 
its authors ; whereas, by more skilful management, it might 
have been materially altered according to the washes of its 
enemies. 

General Gascoigne's resolution against reducing tlie num- 
ber of English representatives, of which Lyndhurst approved, 
was a very dexterous move, but was turned to the decided 
advantage of the Reformers by an immediate dissolution of 
l^irliament. 

This coup was wholly unexpected by Lord Ivvndhurst, and 
he left the bench of the Court of Exchequer in seeming con- 
fu)nor°^"" sternation on hearing that, without any previous notice, the 
rarliament. Kinix was ou liis wav to annonncc it from the throne. He 



LynilhurstV 
behaviour 
on the sud- 



LIFE OF LOED LYKDHURST. 75 

hurried to the House of Lords, which he found in a state of CHAP, 
confusion unexampled since the dispersion of the Long 



Parliament by Oliver Cromwell. According to Hansard, a.d. 1831. 
four Lords having simultaneously risen to order, " Lord Lynd- ^^^^ ^^^ * 
hurst also rose, but the noise in the House was so great that 
it was almost impossible to hear what the noble Lord said. 
He was understood to object to the conduct of the Duke of 
Eichmond, one of the four who had been speaking to order 
at the same time, saying * there was nothing in their Lord- 
ships' proceedings so disorderly as the interference of the 
noble Duke.' The Duke of Eichmond moved that the stand- 
ing order should be read against the use of offensive language 
by noble Lords in that House. The Marquess of Londonderry 
denied that any offensive language had been used by the Lord 
Chief Baron, The Marquess of Clanricarde insisted that the 
Chief Baron's language and manner justified the motion for 
reading the standing order. {Cries of Order, order. Shame, . 
shame. The King, the King.'] At last his Majesty entered, 
and, having mounted the throne, thus began : ' My Lords and 
Gentlemen, I have come to meet you for the purpose of 
proroguing this Parliament, with a view to its immediate 
dissolution.' " * 

Lord Lyndhurst, although generally possessing great pre- 
sence of mind and showing a bold front, if suddenly discon- 
certed looks very wooden, and he is said to have done so on 
this occasion ; but he soon recovered his composure, saying 
to a friend with whom he left the House, " All is not lost." 

The turn which the elections took was rather appalling to 
anti-reformers, but the Lord Chief Baron had *' courage never 
to submit or yield." 

On the meeting of the new Parliament, while the Eeform 
Bill was passing through the House of Commons, he attended 
private conferences to consider the best mode of obstructing 
it ; but he took no part in the preliminary skirmishes which 
arose on the presenting of petitions for or against it, reserving 
himself for the grand conflict on the second reading. AVhen The Reform 
this arrived he displayed extraordinary ability and extra- J^'^Jj'^ ^Y 
ordinary hardihood, which mainly contributed to the tern- Lords. 

* 3 Hansard, 1806. 



76 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

Ct^P. porary victory then won. He spoke on the fifth night of the 

debate, immediately after Lord Chancellor Brougham. 

A.D. 1831. Thus did he modestly begin : — 

Lyndhurst's " After the splendid declamation, my Lords, which you have 

aSst it J^^* heard from my noble and learned friend, which has never 

on the been surpassed on any occasion even by the noble and learned 

second read- Lord himself, it is no matter of surprise that I should present 

myself to your Lordships with great hesitation and anxiety; 

but feeling the situation in which I now stand, and recollecting 

the position which I formerly had the honour of holding in this 

House, I presume it would be considered a shrinking from an 

imperious duty if I satisfied myself by giving a silent vote on 

an occasion so momentous." 

After throwing out some general observations indicating 
an inclination in favour of well-considered reform, he said, — 

" But I feel it my duty to oppose this measure, because it 
appears to me not calculated to support the just prerogatives 
. of the Crown, but to destroy them — not of a nature to establish 
the authority of this house, but to undermine and overthrow that 
authority— not to promote the rights and liberties of the people, 
but to destroy them." 

He then resorted to his favourite manoeuvre ; he accused 
his antagonists of political inconsistency, bringing forward 
passages from speeches and writings of Lord Grey, Lord 
John Kussell, Lord Melbourne, nay, of Lord Brougham 
himself, expressing a favourable opinion of the existing House 
of Commons, and pointing out the danger of rashly changing 
the constituent bodies by which it is returned, suppressing 
the fact that these opinions were brought forward to combat 
universal suffrage, or some such chimera. He then pro- 
ceeded to point out the fixtal effects of the proposed retbrm 
upon all classes, beginning with the lawyers : — 

" Among certain persons, I know that gentlemen connected 
with the profession of the law are not considered of much im- 
portance ; but, my Lords, in times of trouble and danger this 
opinion becomes doubty erroneous. There are few men in such 
times who are so important — active agitiitors — keen and intel- 
ligent — prepared for a stirring life by previous education 
and liabits. By what means have you secured for them an 
entrance into the House of Commons ? None ! But they will 



A.u. 1831. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 77 

become agitators, — they will excite public feeling, and make CHAP. 
extravagant promises, in order to secure themselves a share in 
the representation. These active, intelligent, and ambitious men 
will necessarily therefore throw themselves into the democratic 
scale, and give it a fearful preponderance. The House of Com- 
mons, in Avhich I have served a long apprenticeship, I know 
will become an unmanageable democratic body. To the monarchical 
institutions of the country I have been attached both hy habit and educa- 
tion. I do not wish for a change which may affect the rights and 
privileges of the Crown, nor for one which will bring about a 
professed republic, or a republic in the shape of a limited mo- 
narchy. Eepublics are tyrannical, capricious, and cruel. I do 
not charge the ministers with having introduced the bill for 
the purpose of subverting our form of government; but such will 
be its certain effect. You are called upon to open the flood- 
gates which will admit the torrent of democratic power. That 
torrent will rush in and overpower us. The noble and learned 
Lord on the woolsack, with his buoyancy and nimbleness, may 
for a time float upon the tide, and play his gambols on the 
surface, but the least check will submerge him, and he will sink 
to rise no more." 

In his peroration the orator made a magnanimous allusion 
to his origin : — 

" I cannot boast an illustrious descent. I have sprung from 
the people. I owe the situation I have the honour to hold in 
this House to the generous kindness of my late sovereign, — a 
monarch largely endowed with great and princely qualities. I 
am proud of being thus associated with the descendants of those 
illustrious names which have shed lustre upon the history of our 
country. But if I thought that your Lordships were capable of 
being influenced by the threats which have been audaciously 
held out to you, and that you should be so induced to swei*ve 
from the discharge of your duty when everything valuable in 
our institutions is at stake, I should be ashamed of this dignit}'-, 
and take refuge from it in the comparative obscurity of private 
life, rather than mix with men so unmindful of the obligations 
imposed upon them by their high station and illustrious birth. 
Perilous as is the situation in which we are placed, it is, at the 
same time, a proud one, — the eyes of the country are anxiously 
turned upon us, and, if we decide as becomes us, we shall merit 
the eternal gratitude of every friend of the constitution, and of 
the British empire." 

Earl Grey, in an admirable reply, touched very cuttingly 



78 KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, on Lord Lyndhurst's charges of inconsistency, taunted him 
' with his sudden conversion to Catholic emancipation, and 



A.D. 1831. hinted very intelligibly at his former democratic opinions. 
Lyndhurst's When he had conchided, a memorable scene took place, 
clm^stencv ^^^^^^11 1 myself witnessed, standing on the steps of the throne. 

Lord Lyndhui'st. — " The noble Earl has been pleased in the 
course of his speech to allude to me, and he seemed to consider 
that at one period of my life I entertained opinions opposed to 
those I now avow and act upon. But, if the noble Earl enter- 
tains any such impressions, I beg to assure him that he is grossly 
misinformed, and utterl}^ mistaken." 

Earl Grey. — " My Lords, I did understand that the noble and 
learned Lord at one period of his life entertained opinions favour- 
able to the consideration of the question of parliamentary reform." 

Lord Lyndhurst. — " Never ! " 

'\ Lord Denman, who had gone the circuit with Lyndhurst, 
ah4 full well knew what those opinions had been, Avas then 
standing by me. Shaking his fist in a manner which made 
me afraid that he would draw upon himself the notice of the 
Housed he exclaimed, " Villain ! lying villain ! " But, in reality, 
what the noble and learned Lord said was literally true, for 
at the period of his life alluded to he was not favourable to 
parliamentary reform, but wished Parliament to be abolished, 
that a National Convention might be established in its 
place. 

Oct. 7. Upon a division, the second reading of the bill was nega- 

tived by a majority of forty-one peers. 

The Reform Lord Lyudliurst was in hopes that ministers would resign, 

introdm;ed. ^^^^ ^^^^^ "t^© Great Seal would again be in his possession ; but 
this event, though decreed by fate, was delayed for several 
stormy and anxious years. 

The session was speedily closed, that, according to parlia- 
mentary usage, the Keform Bill might be agaiu introduced 

Dec. G. into Parliament ; and upon the two Houses reassembling, 
after a recess of a few weeks, liis Majesty, in his speecli from 
the throne, began with saying, " I feel it to be my duty, in 
the first place, to recommend to your most careful considera- 
tion the measures which will be proposed to you for a reform 
in the Commons Ilouse of l^arliamcnt ; a speedy and satis- 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 79 

factory settlement of this question becomes daily of more CHAP, 
pressing importance to the security of the state, and to the ' 



content and welfare of my people." The new Bill was forth- a.d. 1832. 
with launched in the House of Commons, but it did not 
reach the Lords till the month of April in the following year. 
Lyndhurst's hostility to it remained unabated, and, notwith- 
standing the strong feeling in favour of reform then mani- 
fested by the great bulk of the nation, he was resolved again 
to reject it on the second reading. He spoke against it on Lyndhurst's 
the fourth night of the debate, and, in allusion to Lord a^atLtiton 
Grey's pledsfe that it should be as ef&cient as the former the second 

. . . readino-. 

bill, he said, ^' It is as efficient, and, according to my inter- °* 

pretation of its provisions, as mischievous and as flagrant. I 
have considered, with great care, whether I was right in the 
decision at which I formerly arrived, and all my meditations 
and inquiries have satisfied me that it is imj)ossible for me to 
pursue any other course." 

The grand question now being whether, if necessary, there 
should be a large creation of new peers to carry tlie bill, 
Lyndhurst said, *I do not impute to the noble Earl the 
intention of resorting to such a rash, and desperate, and 
wicked measure, which would overwhelm him with disgrace, 
and the country with ruin." He then entered into a very 
invidious classification of the supporters of the bill. First, 
came the whole body of Dissenters, whom he severely stigma- 
tised. Then the numerous band of persons without property 
or virtue, quoting the words of the Koman historian, " Nam 
semper in civitate quibus opes nullce sint, bonis invident, malos 
extollunt, Vetera odere, nova exoptant ; odio suariim reriim 
mutari omnia students Next he specified the conductors of 
the daily press, — whether as a subdivision of the last class 
was left doubtful. '* Of these," said he, " a great proportion 
support this measure because they prosper by agitation. 
Besides, they see that, in proportion as the principle of demo- 
cracy is advanced, they rise in their condition. Their personal 
ambition has encouragements which in no other state of 
society could be offered to them."* He concluded by conjuring 

* Lyndhurst afterwards felt that he had committed a great blunder by this 
onslaught on the genus irritabile of " Gentlemen of the Press ; " and to appease 



80 



KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 

A.D. 1832. 



Great 
blunder 
committed 
by Lynd- 
hurst in tho 
Committee. 



tlieir Lordships " to lay aside all temporizing policy, which 
must assuredly, if they should be weak enough to entertain 
it, prove their destruction." * 

The peers were as hostile as ever; but they quailed 
when they considered the consequences of the entire rejec- 
tion of the bill on the second reading, which would have 
amounted to a declaration that they never would agree to 
any disfranchisement, or enfranchisement, or extension of 
the suffrage ; and a section of them thought that the more 
expedient course would be to mutilate the bill in Committee, 
so that its authors might be placed in circumstances of great 
embarrassment, between the choice of being discredited with 
the public by submission, or, by resistance, of quarrelling 
with the King, who had become much more cool in the cause 
of reform than when he had proposed to jump into a hackney 
coach, that he might hurry off to dissolve Parliament. Accord- 
ingly, the second reading was carried by a majority of 
nine. 

The enemies of the bill might now substantially have 
defeated it, or greatly modified it by rescuing a number of 
condemned boroughs from Schedule A, by raising the quali- 
fication of the metropolitan constituencies, and by adding to 
the number of the county members, so as to have preserved 
to a considerable degree the ascendency of the aristocracy in 
parliamentary representation. But Lord Lyndhurst's indis- 
cretion gave a complete triumph to those who shouted out, 
" The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill." 

When the peers were to discuss the bill clause by clause 
in Committee, he resorted to a mancBuvre which he thought 
very clever, but which was not only transparent, but clumsily 
executed. He moved that the disfranchising clauses with 
which the bill began should be postponed till the enfran- 
chising clauses were disposed of; this he did in a speech 
against all disfrancliisement, clearly betraying his purpose 
to defeat the measure altogether. The Duke of Welling- 
ton and the whole Tory party, confiding in his prudence, 



thorn ho presidod at an nnnivor.sary dinner of their society, when lie extolled 
their ahilitica and acconiplislnnents, and asserted that literatnre, seienee, and 
good government re.sted mainly on their exertions. * 12 Hansard, 428. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 81 

although wishing that he had taken a more straightforward CHAP, 
course, rallied round him, and his amendment was carried ' 



nsis on 
the dispute 
between the 



by a large majority. ^Vhen the division was announced, he a.d. 1832 
chuckled exceedingly, and in a stage whisper exclaimed, 
" Grey is checkmated ! " 

There had been no such crisis in England since the expul- c 
sion of James II. It is impossible to deny that the Eeform 
Bill was a revolution, by suddenly transferriner supreme King and 
power irom one body m the state to another, — irom an ters about 
oligarchy to the middle orders, — although it was intended that ^eerl'^U) 
the transfer should be made without physical force, and pass the Re- 
according to constitutional forms. There was now serious ^^^ 
danger of civil war, for a probability appeared that the 
executive government would be speedily in the hands of men 
prepared to defend the existing order of things to the last 
extremity, and there were hundreds of thousands in the great 
provincial towns ready to march to the metropolis for the 
Bill, and to sacrifice their lives in its defence. 

Lord Grey determining, without hesitation, that he would 
not submit to the amendment which had been carried, and 
thinking that it did not become him to leave the country with- 
out a government, while such a misfortune could possibly be 
warded off, immediately waited upon the King, and repre- 
sented to him that the only mode -of avoiding a public con- 
vulsion was for his Majesty to consent to the creation of a 
sufficient number of new peers to constitute a majority in 
favour of the Eeform Bill. The King firmly refused ; and he 
cannot be blamed for refusing, as such a step could be 
considered only a coup d'etat, and he had been told by persons 
about him that there was no necessity for it, as a majority of 
the peers were now ready to yield a large measure of reform, 
although they would not agree to the ruin of their order. 
Lord Grey and his colleagues thereupon tendered their resig- 
nation, which was graciously accepted.' 

Now was the most splendid moment of Lyndhurst's career. Mny oth. 
One fine morning, while he was sitting in the Court of Ex- 
chequer, listening to the argument on a special demurrer, 
and asking Bayley which way he should give judgment, a 
letter was delivered to him from Sir Herbert Taylor, the 

VOL. VIII. G 



82 REIGN OF WILLIAM lY. 

CHAP. King's private Secretary, requiring his immediate attendance 

' at St. James's palace. From a King's messenger being the 

A.D. 1832. bearer of the letter, the fact ^yas immediately known all over 

Lyndhurst Westminster Hall, and I well remember the sensation excited 

the Khig to iii the Court of King's Bench by the loud whisper — " The 

be the head Chief Barou has been sent for." He immediately unrobed, 

ot a new t • n ■ • i i 

Govern- and Hi a few minutes he was m the royal presence. 

™®"*' I never heard him relate the particulars of this audience, 

and the accounts of it circulated at the time were probably 
founded rather on conjecture than authentic information. 
The King, after the ceremonial salutation had taken place, 
w^as supposed to have said to him : — " I have great confidence 
in you, my lord, and I consider you a very honest man. I 
wash you to be my adviser in this conjuncture ; but there is 
only one preliminary difficulty to be got over. You must 
know that my royal word is pledged to granting a liberal 
measure of parliamentary reform, and this nothing shall 
induce me to break, although my late ministers are for going 
farther than is necessary, or perhaps safe. But I have heard 
that your Lordship is conscientiously persuaded that all 
reform would be mischievous, and that the representation 
ought to remain as it is, without any innovation. Now, if 
these are your sentiments, I fear I cannot have your aid in 
this emergency." — Chief Baron. — "Sir, — Your Majesty has 
been entirely misinformed on this subject. True, I have 
been always opposed to the wild, democratical, Jacobinical 
principles which generated the horrors of the French Revolu- 
tion; but I have long seen the necessity for temperate, 
well-considered reform in our representative system, to bring 
it back to what it was in the reign of your royal ancestor, 
Edward I. Your Majesty, I hope, will pardon me for saying 
that the Reform Bill of your late ministers as it now stands 
would, in my opinion, be fatal to the monarchy, and for that 
reason I have been driven very reluctantly to oppose it. But 
it no doubt contains enactments which may be salutary, and, 
if it could be reasonably modified, it niiglit strengthen the 
Crown, while it gives contentment to your Majesty's subjects." 
Kinf^. — "My Lord Chief Baron, my Lord Chief Baron, you 
are the very man for mo : you have hit upon the basis I wish 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 83 

for my new administration. If a majority of the Lords would CHAP, 
have accepted the Bill as it is, I should not have withheld the ' 



royal assent, although my private opinion is that it may a.d. I832. 
injuriously interfere with the efficiency of the Executive 
Government; but I find that it cannot be constitutionally 
carried through both Houses of Parliament." Chief Baron. — 
'*If your Majesty's late advisers refuse all compromise, I 
should think that your Majesty's patriotic intentions might 
be fully carried into effect by calling to your councils those 
who may approve of a measure of reform such as the Lords 
may agree to, and such as will accord with the royal pledge 
which your Majesty is so anxious to fulfil." After a good 
deal of further discussion in the same strain, it was agreed 
that Lord Lyndhurst should sound the leaders of the Tory 
party, as to the formation of a new administration to carry 
a modified Keform Bill. 

He first went to Sir Kobert Peel, who treated the proposal 
with scorn. But, to his great delight and surprise after this 
rebuff, he found the Duke of Wellington ready to make the 
attempt. This illustrious man had very peculiar notions of 
his duty to the Crown ; and, although, in November, 1830, he 
had pronounced our representative system to be an absolute 
piece of perfection, yet as King William, both in speeches 
from the throne prepared for him, and by voluntary private 
declarations, had expressed an opinion that some change 
in the system was necessary, the monarchical patriot was 
w'illing to make a sacrifice of his own consistency to ex- 
tricate the government of the country from the seemingly 
inextricable difficulty in which it was involved. He therefore 
professed his readiness to serve in the new cabinet, in any ca- 
pacity in which his services might be deemed most available. 

Lyndhurst seemed now to have the premiership within his 
grasp, although it turned out to be a phantom. Instead of 
trying to clutch it, however, he thought the more discreet 
course would be to content himself with the resumption of The Duke 
the Great Seal. ton^ i^^^^"^' 

Therefore, having by appointment gone down to Windsor Lyndhurst s 
in the evening of the following day, he explained to the be at the 
King the Duke of Wellington's willingness to comply with 



head of the 
(Jovern- 



G 2 mcnt. 



84 



KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 

A.D. 1832 



May 14. 

The new 
Govern- 
ment ex- 
tinguished. 



Lord Grey 
restoied. 



his Majesty's wishes, and tendered the advice that his Grace 
should immediately be sent for, and commissioned to submit 
a list of a new administration, with the Duke himself at the 
head of it. 

This was accordingly done, and the Duke gallantly under- 
took the task, although fully aware of the troubles in which 
it must involve him. He first received an alarming check 
from an address of the House of Commons to the King, 
carried by a large majority, expressing deep regret at the 
resignation of the late ministers, and praying that his Majesty 
would not call to his counsels any others who were not pre- 
pared to support the Eeform Bill in its integrity. Neverthe- 
less, he persevered, and he had obtained the consent of 
respectable though second-rate men, to fill the most im- 
portant offices of the new government, of w^hich it was under- 
stood that Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst was to be the soul. 
But there was soon an appalling explosion of public opinion 
against it ; and it was condemned, not only by Whigs and 
Kadicals, who were Keformers, but by a considerable section 
of the Tory party, headed by Sir Robert Inglis, the consistent 
and popular representative for the University of Oxford. 
Still, the general opinion was that the Lyndhurst adminis- 
tration would, at least, be installed, till the embryo was 
extinguished during a discussion which took place in the 
House of Commons on the presentation of a petition in 
favour of the Reform Bill from the City of London. Such 
weakness was then displayed by the defenders of the new 
government, and such strong censure was poured upon its 
originator from all quarters, that, although the House came 
to no vote upon the subject, every one felt that Lord Grey 
and liis colleagues must be recalled. 

With the concurrence of Lyndhurst, the Duke of Wellington 
had waited on the King, and announced to liim that the 
formation of a new government was impossible, and Sir 
Herbert Taylor had written a letter to Lord Grey, requiring 
his })resence in the royal closet. When the minister and his 
Majesty met, the condition of the Whigs resuming office 
was speedily conceded as a matter of necessity, — both parties 
still entertaining a hope that the power to create new peers 



LIFE OF LORD LTNDHUEST. 85* 

would be sufficient, without tlie threatened wound to the CHAP. 

. . Y 

constitution being actually inflicted. ' 



When explanations of these proceedings were given in the a.d. 1832. 
House of Lords, the Duke of Wellington said : — May n. 

" His Majesty was graciously pleased, on that very day when 
he was left entirely alone by his ministers, to send for a noble 
arid learned friend of mine, who had held a high place as well in 
the service as in the confidence of his Majesty, to inquire if, in 
his opinion, there were any means, and, if so, what means of 
forming a government for his Majesty on the principle of carr}^- 
ing an extensive reform in the representation of the people. My 
noble and learned friend informed me of his Majesty's situation, 
and I considered it my duty to enquire from others, for I was as 
unprepared as his Majesty for the consideration of such a ques- 
tion. I then found that a large number of friends of mine were 
not unwilling to give their support to a government formed 
upon such a principle, and with the positive view of resistance 
to that advice w^hich had been tendered to his Majesty respecting 
the means of carrying the Eeform Bill in its present shape. I 
did not look to any objects of ambition, I advised him to seek 
the assistance of other persons to fill the high situations in the 
State, expressing myself wdlling to give his Majesty all assistance, 
w^hether in office or out of office, to enable his Majesty to resist 
the advice to which I have referred." 

After pointing out, at considerable length, the unconstitu- 
tional character and the mischievous consequences of the 
proposed creation of peers, he thus concluded : — 

"Under these circumstances, I believe your Lordships wall 
not think it unnatural,, when I considered his Majesty's situation, 
that I should endeavour to assist his Majesty. But, my Lords, 
when I found that in consequence of the discussions in another 
place it w^as impossible to foi*m a government on the proposed 
principle which w^ould secure the confidence of the country, I 
felt it my duty to inform his Majesty that I could not fulfil the 
commission with which he was pleased to honour me, and his 
Majesty informed me that he would renew his communications 
with his former ministry." 

Lord Lyndhurst, immediately following, said, — 

" My Lords, I am anxious to explain my part in these transac- Lyndlmrst's 
tions. I feel it a duty I owe to my Sovereign — a duty I owe to j^,g conduct 
the country — a duty I owe to your Lordships' llousp, and, if in this at- 

liair. 



.D. 1832. 



86 EETGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, your Lordships allow me to say so, a duty whicli I owe to 
myself. On the day when his Majesty accepted the resignations 
of the late ministers, he was graciously pleased to desire me to 
attend him at St. James's. I had had no previous communication 
with his Majesty for a long period." 

Having stated, in vague terms, the commission he received 
from the King, who sent for him as his former Chancellor, to 
consult him in the extraordinary crisis which had arisen, he 
thus proceeded : — 

" I, of course (as it was my boimden duty to do), obeyed his 
Majesty. I should have basely shrunk from my duty if I had 
declined. In consequence of this interview I waited upon my 
noble friend the illustrious Duke, and communicated to him the 
task which had been imposed upon me by my Sovereign, and 
the distressing position in which his Majesty was placed." 

He relates his conversation with the Duke of Wellington, 
but is silent as to what passed between him and Sir Robert 
Peel, and thus continues : — 

" I communicated the result of my inquiry to his Majesty at 
the time appointed; all that was best calculated to afford him 
assistance — all that I had heard, all that I had learned — the 
result of my own meditations, I frankly communicated to my 
sovereign. His Majesty requested me to invite my noble and 
gallant friend to call upon him ; I did so, and thus my mission 
terminated. It is for this, my Lords, of which I have now given 
you a full and faithful narrative, that I have been traduced, 
maligned, calumniated." 

Having mentioned calumnies upon him in the press, he 
thus replied to a speech made against him in the House of 
Commons by Sir Francis Burdett : — 

" He is reported to have affirmed that I acted inconsistently 
with my duty as a Judge of the land. I say that if he asserted 
this, he must, taking it at the best, be ignorant of the constitution 
of the country. He ought to know that, as a member of the 
Privy Council, I am bound by virtue of my office to give advice 
to my sovereign if ho requires it. More than this, he ought to 
know, if lie knows anything of the Constitution, that I have 
taken an oath to this cllcct ; and more, he ought to know that as 
a Judge I am hound to volunteer my advice to his Majesty if I consider 
any proposed course of proceeding inimical to the safety of the Crown. 
My Lords, excuse me if I go one step farther; ho has charged 



A.D. 1832. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHURST. 87 

me, as a Judge, with being tlie leader of a violent and virulent CHAP, 
party in this House. Whether there is or is not such a faction 
in this House I will not stay to inquire; I wish to have no 
motives imputed to me; I impute none to other men. I will 
only say that I never aspired to such a position as leader of a 
party ; it is alike foreign to my inclination and my habits. After 
the noble Earl opposite became minister, I never engaged in 
political discussions till the Eeform Bill was brought forward. 
Thinking that the tendency of this measure was to destroy the 
monarchy and the constitution, was it not my duty as a Judge 
of the land, as a Privy Councillor, as a Member of your Lord- 
ships' House, with all my power to oppose it ? If this measure 
had originated with, and been supported by my earliest and most- 
valued friends — by the very friends of my bosom — I would have 
acted in the same way. So much for my conduct and the attacks 
upon me. For the rest, the Eeformers are triumphant — the 
barriers are broken down, the waters are out — who can predict 
their course, or tell the devastation they will occasion?"* 

With a very ample exercise of the suppressio veri, and a 
little of the suggestio falsi, he made a favo-urable impression 
on the House, and for a brief space he was rather considered 
an ill-used man. He had calculated confidently (and as 
it turned out successfully) on the ignorance of the assembly 
he was addressing, while he denounced the ignorance of his 
assailant in the House of Commons ; for, neither Lord Grey 
nor the Chancellor, nor any other Peer, questioned the doc- 
trine which he laid down ex cathedra, — that it is the duty of 
the Judges, qua Judges, to volunteer advice to the Crown, if 
they consider any proceeding of the King's ministers, in or 
out of Parliament, unconstitutional or mischievous. I pre- 
sume he did not mean to include all County-Court Judges 
and inferior Magistrates. But, supposing his doctrine to 
extend only to the Judges of the superior courts, who take a 
special oath of office, I must be allowed to doubt whether 
Puisnes or Chiefs are guilty of any breach of duty, if disap- 
proving of the policy of the Government, with respect to 
parliamentary reform, or to peace or war, or any other 
important question involving the safety of the State, they 
omit to volunteer their advice to the Crown as Judges ; and 
if they were to demand an audience for this purj)Ose, the 
* 12 Hansard, 993. 



88 



KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 



A.D. 1832. 



Lyndhurst 
abandons 
his opposi- 
tion to the 
Reform 
BUI. 



I'eel con- 
structs tlie 
Comerva- 
live party. 



ajDplication would be treated witli just ridicule. The Judges 
can only advise the Crown upon such a subject as the power 
of the reigning sovereign to direct and control the education 
and the marriages of members of the Koyal Family ; and 
this only when they are called upon to do so by the advice 
of the Lord Chancellor. 

Lyndhurst never again appeared in the House of Lords 
during any of the subsequent proceedings on the Eeform 
Bill. He acquiesced in the recommendation of the Duke of 
Wellington that, " to avoid forcing the creation of Peers, all 
opposition to the Bill should be withdrawn ;" and it passed 
without modification or amendment. Such was the result 
of the indiscreet attempt to *' postpone the disfranchising 
clauses ;" and the noble and learned author of it was pointed 
to by the finger of scorn as " the engineer hoist with his own 
petard." Although his party seemed irrevocably crushed, he 
himself by no means lost hope, justly trusting to the reaction 
which must inevitably follow such a popular movement, and 
to the blunders likely to be committed by the Liberals, who 
now foolishly believed themselves in possession of permanent 
power. Instead of following the example of Lord Tenterden, 
who vowed that he would never again enter the House of 
Lords after the Reform Bill passed,* Lyndhurst sagaciously 
predicted that he should ere long be again j)residing on the 
woolsack. I was appointed Solicitor General shortly after the 
dissolution of Parliament which followed, and he blamed me 
for giving up my circuit to accept this office, as he assured 
me I could not possibly hold it more than a few weeks. 

At first it looked as if the Tories as a party were annihi- 
lated. When the new elections took place they could hardly 
show themselves on the hustings, and when the House of 
Commons met, the small number returned hardly filled the 
opposition bench. Sir Pobert Peel wisely reformed the party, 
laying aside its ancient name, and calling his supporters to 
rally round him under the designation of *' Conservatives." 
He declared that he acquiesced in the Beform Bill now that 
it was law, althongh he had opposed it in its progress, but 



* Tlii.s vow of Lord Tciitcnleu was fulfilled ; 
ment ajraiu met. 



for lie died before parliu- 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHURST. 89 

his policy should be to check the further efforts of the Eadical CHAP, 
party, who, not contented with what had been achievedj ' 

were desirous of completely subverting our institutions. a.d. 1832. 
He determined that he would not factiously oppose any good 
measure which the Government might introduce, but that if 
goaded by their radical allies to propose any dangerous 
innovation, he would try to rouse an anti-revolutionary spirit 
in the nation. He therefore constantly attended in his place, 
while the Speaker was in the chair, shouldered by Mr. O'Con- 
nell and Mr. Hemy Hunt, the most egregious of demagogues, 
who often sat down on the opposition bench by his side. Dex- 
terously availing himself of the extravagances and errors of 
his antagonists, he ere long appeared to the discerning to be 
on the road to victory. 

Lyndhurst at this time did not at all act in concert with Lyndhmst's 
Peel, and was actuated by totally different feelings. His policy. 
object was to harass and discredit the Government by all 
means, without considering whether they were fair or 
factious, and without foresight as to their effect upon the 
country, or upon the permanent success of his own party. 

His first effort in the new Parliament was against myself, His attack 
— not from malice, 1 believe, but rather from a love of mis- licitor Ge- 
chievous fun. I had represented Stafford in two Parliaments, ^^^"^i- 
and had complied with the well-known custom, which had pre- 
vailed in the borough at least ever since Sheridan first repre- 
sented it, of paying them "head money." This could not 
properly be called hribery, for the voter received the same 
sum on which ever side he voted, but it might be treated as 
bribery in a court of law. For the Parliament after my 
appointment as Solicitor General I had been returned for the 
newly enfranchised borough of Dudley, where the most abso- 
lute purity prevailed. But there had been a petition againsj 
the new return for Stafford, and a bill had been passed by 
the House of Commons to indemnify all witnesses who should 
be examined to prove that bribery had been committed at 
the last or any former election for the borough. I had 
nothing to do with any of these proceedings ; but when the 
bill came up to the Lords, Lyndhurst represented that it was 
a job of the Solicitor General, and that the bill had been so 



90 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 



A.D. 1833, 



He opposes 

the County 
Court Bill. 



framed as to indemnify him without his being examined as a 
witness. In the debate on the second reading, he said : — 

"It appeared that bribery to a great extent had existed at 
Stafford, both on former occasions and at the late election. The 
evidence showed that not only the electors but the candidates 
were deeply implicated in these transactions, and he considered 
it necessary that their Lordships should take some effectual 
measure to check such flagrant corruption. But this was a Bill 
to indemnify all persons examined as witnesses, all candidates, 
and all others who had violated the law and been guilty of 
bribery." 

In the mean time a whisper was circulated through the 
House that the Solicitor General was standing below the bar, 
and all eyes were turned upon him. A noble Lord present 
proposed to introduce a clause by which all who had been 
candidates for Stafford should be exempted from the indem- 
nity ; but Lyndhurst, satisfied with having had a laugh at an 
old friend, afterwards suffered the bill to pass quickly through 
the House. In truth it extended only to those who should 
be examined under it as witnesses.* 

Lyndhurst was in downright earnest the next time he came 
forward, which was to oppose a Bill introduced by Lord 
Brougham, for the establishment of the County Court juris- 
diction, which, when at last carried, proved so beneficial. 
He prudently abstained from objecting to the second reading^ 
but before allowing it to be considered in the committee, he 
delivered a very long and elaborate speech against it, giving 
a very favourable specimen of his powers of reasoning and 
misrepresentation. He said : — 

"He would freely admit that with the multitude this was a 
popular measure. "Well it might be so. It promised cheap — it 
promised expeditious law. These were plausible topics — topics 
Veil calculated to catch the breath of popular opinion. But it 
should be borne in mind — and he trusted the countr}- and their 
Lordships would think well upon it — that cheap law did not 
always mean cheap justice, nor expeditious law expeditious 
justice. To what," ho asked, "is to be ascribed the admir- 
able administration of real justice in this country? To the 
central system by which it is administered. Twelve or fifteen 



♦ 17 IIansi\rd, 1071. 



A.D. 18c 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUEST. 91 

judges, educated in the same manner, sitting together at one CHAP, 
time and in one place, consulting each other daily, and, if need 
be, hourly, subject to the criticism of their compeers, subject 
also to the examination of an acute and vigilant bar, kept con- 
stantly alive to the justice of the decision of the judges by their 
regard for the interests of the judges and their own credit, 
— ensure for the suitors a certainty, a precision, a purity, and 
even a freedom from the suspicion of corruption, such as no 
other country in the world could ever boast of." 

He then went over the several enactments of the bill, 
considerably perverting their meaning, and after representing 
that it was only a device to snatch at popularity and to 
extend the patronage of the Lord Chancellor, concluded by 
disclaiming any personal feeling on this occasion, or any 
party bias, and assuring their Lordships that he was ^' re- 
luctantly compelled to try to arrest a measure so mischievous 
in discharge of the duty he owed to his country, to West- 
minster Hall, and to himself."* 

. On the thii'd reading there was a fair trial of the strength 
of political parties, and the whippers-in on both sides exerted 
themselves to the utmost in the muster of peers and proxies 
from remote parts of Europe. Lyndhurst again made a very 
clever speech, and, I really believe, even influenced some 
votes — particularly by his argument, that the bill was " an 
enormous job." Said he, with an ostentations sneer : — 

" I am well aware that personally my noble and learned friend 
on the woolsack has no wish for this unlimited power; my noble 
and learned friend does not desire this vast patronage, and while 
exercised by him it would be safe ; but the Great Seal may be 
transferred to another who may be ambitious and desirous of 
gratifying puffing and sycophantish dependents. My noble and 
learned friend has candidly told us that he had looked about 
to see where this formidable patronage could be lodged with less 
peril, and that, not being successful in his search elsewhere, he 
had been compelled as a dernier ressort to retain it for himself. 
I am ready and willing to give my noble and learned friend 
credit for the most patriotic views and the most disinterested 
intentions ; but we must not legislate for individuals ; we miist 
contemplate the possibility of a Lord Chancellor, with the 
commanding eloquence and transcendent abilities of my noble 

* 18 Hansard, 868. 



A.D. 1833. 



92 KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, and learned friend, yet not possessed of his moderation and dis- 
interestedness, — on the contrary, anxious to devote the whole of 
his energies to the purposes of personal aggrandizement, and 
indisposed to those institutions which may appear to him calcu- 
lated to check him in his career. Such a person, conscious of 
the fleeting nature of popular applause, might wish to establish 
his power on some more substantial foundation, and might find it 
convenient to surround himself with a band of gladiators arrayed 
as judges, ready to obey his commands and to deal destruction 
among his adversaries." * 

Upon a division, the Peers present were equally divided, 
but, proxies being called, the bill was rejected by a majority 
of five,t and the measure was delayed above twelve years. 
His inac- Jq 1334 Lvndhurst took very little part in Parliamentary 

tivity in ... 

1834. proceedings. Various bills for the reform of the Common 

Law had been prepared, but they could not be introduced 
by reason of my no longer being a member of the House of 
Commons. At the beginning of the Session, I vacated my 
seat on my promotion to the office of x\ttorney General, and, 
losing my election for Dudley, on account of the growing- 
unpopularity of the Government, I was not returned for 
Edinburgh till within a few weeks of the prorogation. Pepys, 
although afterwards Chancellor, was then of so little mark 
or likelihood that nothing was intrusted to him. The bill 
which chiefly occupied the two Houses was that for the 
Amendment of the Poor Law ; and this Lyndhurst could not 
very well oppose, as it was warmly supported by the Duke 
of Wellington. But active assaults on the ^Yhig Ministers 
were less necessary, as they seemed doomed to destruction 
by internal discord. The Radicals not giving the Reform 
Bill a fair trial, and still unreasonably urging on farther con- 
cessions, the Cabinet was divided as to how far these demands 
should be complied with, and four of the then most Con- 
servative members seceded. An arrangement followed which 
rather made the Government more popular — but this had 
scarcely been completed when a foolish dispute arose about 

* It 18 a cnrion8 fact, tliat nt this time Brouglinm lind contrived to liave nil 
the journalists in Loudon writing ill his praise; some from real admiration — 
some from favours actually conferred, but more from exiiectations lavishly 
excited. t 19 Hansard, 372. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHURST. 93 

some Irish job, which induced Lord Grey to " descend from CHAP, 
power." Lyndhurst thought the Great Seal already his, — ' 



when, to the astonishment of all mankind, it was announced a.d. 1834. 
that the Whigs were to go on under Lord Melbourne as 
Premier. Many were astonished at Lyndhurst's inactivity 
for the remainder of the session. Brougham, still Chan- 
cellor, — boasting that he might have been First Lord of the 
Treasury himself, and that he put in Lamb as his subordinate, 
— played most fantastic tricks, which made his colleagues 
weep. These might have been turned to excellent account 
for the public amusement, — but Lyndhurst, who continued 
Chief Baron, was obliged to be out of town upon the circuit. 
He comforted himself by thinking that the best policy for 
the time probably was to abstain from the danger of resusci- 
tating the popularity of the Whigs by any Tory assault upon 
them. 

Had the Whig Ministers been allowed again to meet indiscreet 
Parliament, Brougham holding the Great Seal, they must Lord Mel- 
have been regularly and permanently turned out in a few ^y^^y^ ^v 
weeks by a vote of want of confidence. But William IV., 
by an act of folly which was deplored by those whom he 
wished to serve, prolonged Whig rule for six years, with the 
interval of ^'the hundred days"* during which Lyndhurst Nov. 1834. 
was tantalized by holding the Great Seal in his slippery 
grasp. 

No one heard the news of the dismissal of the Whigs with 
more astonishment than the Lord Chief Baron. It was then 
term time, and he was sitting in the Court of Exchequer, 
when a note was brought to him from the Duke of AVellington 
announcing that his Grace had been summoned to attend the 
King at Brighton with a view to the formation of a new 
administration, and requesting the Chief Baron to call upon 
him at night when he expected to be again back in London. 
The manner of the noble and learned Judge, on this occasion, 
betrayed some excitement ; but, without any communication to 
his brethren on the bench, he soon seemed to resume the 

* Sir Eobert Peel's administration of 1835 was called " The Imiidred days," 
in reference to the designation given to Napoleon's reign after his return from 
Elba, which lasted exactly so long. 



94 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, consideration of the case under discussion, and lie continued 
' to attend to the arguments of counsel for the rest of the day 
A.D. 1834. as if nothing extraordinary had occurred. He was in a state 
of great anxiety from the time of his leaving the Court 
till the moment arrived for knowing his fate at Apsley House. 
The Duke at once told him that Sir Kobert Peel, who was 
then at Rome, was to be Prime Minister ; but there could be 
no doubt that he would concur in recommending: that Lord 
Lyndhurst should again be Chancellor, and that the King 
wished the transfer of this, and all the other offices of the 
Government, to take place as speedily as possible. It was 
then agreed between them that, to gratify His Majesty's im- 
patience to be rid of his Reform Ministers, a sort of interim 
Government should be arranged till Sir Robert Peel's return 
home ; that the seals of all the Secretaries of State should 
be demanded from them, and held by the Duke of Welling- 
ton ; but that the Great Seal, as was usual, should be allowed 
to remain in the hands of the present Chancellor for a short 
time to allow him to give judgment in cases which had been 
argued before him. 

Lord Brougham having, in a manner rather unusual and 
uncourteous, returned the Great Seal to the King on the 
22nd of November, it was the same day delivered to Lord 
Lyndhurst ; but he continued to preside as Chief Baron till 
the end of Michaelmas Term. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 95 



CHAPTER YL 

LORD CHAKCELLOE DUEING THE 100 DAYS, AND EX-CHAN- 
CELLOR DURING THE ADMINISTRATION OF LORD MEL- 
BOURNE. 

November 18S4— September 1841. 

When Lord Lyndhurst appeared as Chancellor at the sit- CHAP, 
tings after term, there was a divided feeling among those ' 

whose personal interests were not touched by political changes, ^d 1334^ 

The eccentricities of his predecessor weighed in his favour Lyndhm-st 

as well as his own clear intellect and ao-reeable manners ; ''^s^"^ ^^^"" 

° ' cellor. 

but a recollection of his dislike of business and recklessness 
as to the fate of the suitors, caused some even to long for 
the conscientious cunctating and doubting Eldon. 

Sir Eobert Peel, on returning from Italy, although he 
acquiesced in Lyndhurst's appointment as Chancellor, reposed 
little confidence in him, and without consulting him wrote 
the " Tarn worth Manifesto," laying down the liberal principles 
on which the new Government was to be conducted. As he 
chose to dissolve Parliament, I was obliged to go down to 
Edinburgh, and to stand a formidable contest against the now 
Marquis of Dalhousie and Governor General of India, then 
Lord Kamsay, the Peelite candidate. When I was going to 
the Court of King's Bench the morning after my return to 
London, I encountered the Lord Chancellor stepping out of 
his coach at Westminster. He took me into his private 
room, and said, " Well 1 private friendship is more powerful 
than party feeling. I can hardly be sorry that you have 
Avon, and, behold ! as a pledge of peace (so far as it can be 
permitted between an ex-Attorney General and the Lord 
Chancellor he wishes to turn out) take that splendid nosegay 
and carry it into the King's Bench, telling them that I gave 
it you." With proper acknowledgments, and a reciprocation 



96 



REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1834. 



Feb. 1835. 

Meeting of 
a new Par- 
liament. 



Logomachy- 
bet ween 
Lyndhurst 
and 
Broufrliam. 



of good-will equally sincere, I took the nosegay whicli had 
been prepared for the Lord Chancellor after ancient custom, 
in the fashion of that used by Lord Keeper Guildford in the 
reign of Charles II., to conceal his dying lineaments from the 
gazing crowd. Entering the Court of King's Bench in my 
robes, I exhibited the nosegay in testimony of my Edinburgh 
triumph and of the magnanimity of the Lord Chancellor. 

Upon the meeting of the new Parliament, the Lord Chan- 
cellor had a very distasteful task to perform, which was to 
express the King's approbation of the Speaker elected by the 
Commons contrary to the wishes of his Ministers — a bitter 
foretaste of what was to follow. JN'evertheless, said his Lord- 
ship, with a serene countenance : — " Mr. Abercromby, his 
Majesty is fully satisfied of your zeal for the public service, 
and his Majesty therefore does most readily and fully ap- 
prove of the choice of his faithful Commons, and confirms you 
as their Speaker." * 

The King's Speech was most conciliatory to the Liberal 
party, recommending the reform of the ecclesiastical courts, 
a marriage bill for the relief of Dissenters, the reform of 
municipal corporations, and almost all the other measures 
which the late Government liad promised. But this attempt 
seemed only to inflame part}^ animosity, and the debate upon 
the address was carried on with extreme rancour. The late 
Chancellor and his successor, although afterwards on terms of 
the closest intimacy and cordial co-operation, assailed each 
other in language which, had they not presided on the wool- 
sack — supposed to constitute a status of non-comhatancy or 
pugnacious incajpacity — would have rendered a hostile meeting 
on Wimbledon Common next morning indispensable. Lord 
Brougham began the affray by denouncing as unconstitu- 
tional the dismissal of the late Ministers while tliey fully 
enjoyed the confidence of the House of Commons. He 
contended that the present Ministers, by accepting oifice, were 
answerable for it, whether they liad previonsly advised it or 
not; and he particularly taunted the Chancellor with his sudden 
apparent conversion (manifested by the King's Speech) to 
liberal measures, which he had been in the habit of violently 

* 2G Ilansni-cl, 02. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 97 

opposing. He at tlie same time insinuated that this conver- CPIAP. 
sion could not be sincere, and referred in a very galling ' 

manner to his miraculous change of opinion on the question a.d. i835. 
of Catholic emancipation. 

Lord Lyndhurst rose in a real passion, and after complain- 
ing that the- noble and learned Lord had maligned him, tluis 
continued : — 

" The noble and learned Lord has dared to say that I pursued 
the com'se I took for the purpose of retaining my possession of 
office. I deny peremptorily the statement of the noble and 
learned Lord. I say, if I may make use of the expression, lie lias 
uttered an untrutli in so expressing himself. So far from that 
measure being brought forward and supported by us with a view 
to preserve our places, it must be well known that we hazarded 
our places by pursuing that course. What right, then, has the 
noble and learned Lord in his fluent, and, I may say, flip'pant 
manner, to attack me as he has dared to do?" 

He then referred to what Lord Brougham had said about 
the Duke of Wellington's explanation of the manner in which 
the chano-e of Goyernment had been brou2,-ht about : — 

" The view given of that statement was a misrepresentation by 
the noble and learned Lord. His quickness and his sagacity 
must have caused him to understand the noble Duke, and I can 
ascribe what he affirmed only to an intention to misrepresent." — 
(Cries of Order ! order f) 

Lord Brougham. — ' ' I will just use the same language to the *s 
noble and learned Lord that he uses to me, if he chooses to make 
this an arena of indecency." 

Lord Lyndhurst. — " Perhaps I had no right, in strictness, to say 
that the noble and learned Lord intended to pervert, but I have 
stated my reasons for the conclusion to which I have come ; 
those reasons are satisfactory to my own mind, and the noble and 
learned Lord has not denied the correctness of my statement." 

Lord Brougham. — " Every word of it is incorrect." 

Lord Lyndhurst then vindicated the manner in which the 
late ministers had been dismissed : — 

" I should have acted exactly as his Majesty has acted. I con- 
sider myself, as one of the ministers, responsible for what has 
been done, and I should liave been ashamed of myself if 1 had 
been called upon to advise his Majesty and I had not advised 
him to dismiss the late ministers." 

VOL. VIII. H 



98 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP. Lord Brougham. — " The present is the first occasion on which 

I ever heard any one — beyond the merest wrangling cIo^ti — use 
A D 1835 l^^gi^^ge so confounding the difference between erroneous 
opinion and misstated fact. I deny positively having accused 
the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack of having sacrificed 
his principles to retain office." 

Lord Lyndhurst. — " Understanding that the noble and learned 
Lord has withdrawn his offensive imputation, I feel bound to 
apologise for the warmth I have evinced." 
/ Lord Brougham. — " I retract nothing." 

It seems to me that Lyndhurst is to be blamed severely 
for his share in this squabble. The charge of having sud- 
denly supported Catholic emancipation that he might keep 
his office Avas not an affirmation of a fact upon A\hich the lie 
could properly be given ; and, secondly, he gave no answer to 
the charge actually made against him, when he said that the 
Duke of Wellington and Sir Kobert Peel brought forward 
the measure of Catholic emancipation from good motives, as 
they were not inculpated, and although they might have acted 
patriotically, he might have acted from motives the most 
opposite.* 

During the fierce struggle which ensued in the House of 
Commons to determine the fate of the new Government, 
almost uninterrupted tranquillity prevailed in the House of 
Lords. There the Opposition, having no strength, originated 
nothing ; and Peel thought that there would be no use in 
carrying bills through one chamber of the legislature unless 
he could command a majority in the other. Meanwhile 
Lyndhurst and Brougham continued at mortal enmity, even 
renouncing, when referring to each other in debate, the 
nominal friendshii? which generally is preserved in the fiercest 
conflicts of hostile lawyers. As Lyndhurst declared the com- 
mission issued by the late Government to inquire into the 
abuses of municipal corporations to be illegal, Brougham 
moved that a copy of it should be laid before the House, say- 
ing that "the innocent public imagined that something was 
to be done under it for the reform of corporations, but they 
learned from the statement of the noble and learned Lord on 

♦ 2G Ilaiuvard, G3-151. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 99 

the woolsack that it was to be the foundation of an impeach- CHAP, 
ment." Lyndhurst now denied that he had pronounced the ' 



whole of the commission to be illegal, and intimated that a.p. i835. 
when the Eeport of the Commissioners was presented, it might 
be acted upon by the present Government. 

Lord Brougham. — " My Lords, I am lost in astonishinent at 
what has now occurred. In the memory of man never was theie 
such a scene as we have now witnessed, taken in connexion with 
what passed the other night, when I was charged with having put 
the Great Seal to an illegal commission. And now this illegal 
commission is to be adopted by his Majesty's present ministers, 
and it is to prop up their popularity." 

" The noble and learned Lord who had lately held the Great 
Seal " proceeded bitterly to reproach " the noble and learned 
Lord on the woolsack " with his inconsistencies. Lyndhurst at- 
tempted to vindicate himself; but, for once, lost his presence of 
mind or effrontery, — stammered, was confused, and evidently 
quailed under the chastisement which Brougham inflicted 
upon him. Lord Wharncliffe, trying to rescue him, repre- 
sented this as an attack upon the new cabinet, as a body, and 
said that they had all been described as " apostates and sham 
reformers." 

Lord Brougham. — " I have never called any one an apostate. 
It is a hard word to use, and I have not used it, although, cer- 
tainly, I might have called noble Lords opposite ' sham reformers,' 
' half-and-half refoimers,' or ' milk-and-water reformers.' But if 
they intend to yield to the wishes of the people, they will not 
deserve those titles ; and I hope that the noble and learned Lord 
on the woolsack may feel it for his interest to persevere in 
the intentions he has expressed, with a view to municipal 
reform." * 

Who would -then have supposed that the two noble and 
learned enemies would, before the lapse of many months, not 
only be cordially reconciled, but zealously united in opposing 
a Whig Government ? 

Peel, considering the division in the House of Commons on stii Apiii. 
the Irish Church question tantamount to a vote o^ivard of conp ^ii- 1^. Peel 

resigns. 
* 20 Hansard, 304. 

H 2 



100 



KEIGK OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP, dence, and liaving resigned, it was thought as a matter of course 

' that Lyndhurst and Brougham would excliange positions, the 

A.D. 1835. latter being restored to the woolsack on the morrow ; but a 

prophetic voice had uttered the fatal words, " never shall 

sun that morrow see." 

Lyndhurst declared that Brougham was ill-used by his 
exclusion from office, and I fully agreed in this sentiment. 
For the present the seals were put into commission, and I 
was restored to my old office of Attorney General. I was 
the first to be installed in office, that I might sign the 
patents of my colleagues, and I was sworn in before Lord 
Chancellor Lyndhurst at his house in George Street, Hanover- 
square. He received me in a green silk dressing-gown, and 
when the ceremony was over, we took a jocular retrospect 
and prospect of political affairs. He at first said, " You must 
not expect ever to be Chancellor, for Brougham, as he can- 
not be the man, is resolved to destroy the office, and I am 
the last of the race." He afterwards added, "If there is 
still to be a Great Seal, I strongly advise you to stand out 
for it ; Brougham, being civiliter mortuus, it is yours by 
right." 

Lyndhurst thus began a course of policy which he long- 
earnestly pursued — to stir up strife between Brougham and 
me — being prepared to tell Brougham, as soon as they w^ere 
on speaking terms again, that " Campbell was intriguing 
against him, and was his destined successor." 

By this fleeting tenure of the Chancellorship, Lyndhurst 
had lost his office of Chief Baron of the Exchequer ; but he 
was not dissatisfied with his present position, compared w'ith 
that which he had before occupied ; for as ex-Chancellor he 
now had the increased retired allowance of £5000 a-year, 
without the expense and bore of going circuits, and he had 
nothing to think of, day or night, except the best means of 
annoying the Government. 

He began his new career by introducing a very important 
bill, — which was not a party measure. The Duke of 
Beaufort having no male issue by his first wife, upon her 
death marricnl lier lialf sister, by whom he had a sou, 
wlio bore the second title of the family, "l^Farquis of 



Lord Lyiifl- 
hurst's bill 
jfl;out ince.s- 
tiious mai- 
riasieiS. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 101 

Worcester." By the existing law this marriage was voidable, CHAP, 
though not void ; and, if set aside in the life-time of the ' 



parents, their children would have been considered illegiti- a.d. 1835 
mate. The Duke's younger brother, Lord Granville Somerset, 
was married, and had a son, who in that case would have 
been entitled to succeed to the Dukedom. Lyndhurst, an 
intimate friend of the Duke and Duchess, being informed by 
them of the apprehensions they entertained, although the 
younger branch of the family had taken no steps to annul 
their marriage, boldly undertook to alter the law retrospec- 
tively in their favour. In an admirable speech, he pointed 
out the inconvenience and injustice arising from voidable 
marriages, and, as a remedy, proposed that no marriage hitherto 
contracted should be set aside on the ground of affiniti/, no 
proceeding for that purpose^ having been commenced before 
the passing of the Act, and that hereafter all marriages 
within the forbidden degrees either of affinity or consanguinity 
should be null and void ah initio. The bill was right in 
principle. I myself supported it when it came down to the 
House of Commons, and I cannot regret that it passed, 
although it was used afterwards to spread a false belief that 
till Lord Lyndhurst's Act a marriage between a man and the , 
sister of his deceas^d^wife was perfectly legal : whereas it I 
always was, and I hope ever will be, deemed incestuous ; and I ,, 
the only defect to be remedMd^w^f uhe Imperfect procedure \ * 
for declaring its illegality. The general law being improved, \ 
we may give Lyndhurst credit for what he did in this affair, ^ 
without inquiring into his motives. But in the next matter, 
in which he took an active part, no defence can be made 
for him. 

There is nothing on which the prosperity and happiness of Lyndhmst' 
a country depend more than on a good system of municipal!- opposition 
ties. Self-government is the true principle on which human nicipai Re- 
affairs ought to be conducted ; and every city, every town, ^'"^ '^^^'" 
and almost every village, may, for the management of its 
local affairs, be a separate republic, under the control of a 
superintendiug power, which ought not to interfere with its 
free will, but to see that it keeps within its just jurisdiction, 
and conforms to the general law of the land. In early times 



-L 



102 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, when municipal corporations in England arose by royal grant, 
' thp.y tolerably well answered the purpose of tlieir creation, 
A.D. 1835. the defined area to which the charter applied comprehending 
the whole of the existing town, and provision being made 
for the good management of the local affairs of the community 
by functionaries in the election of whom all the inhabitant 
householders had a voice. But, in the course of centuries, 
towns spread far beyond their original limits, having a large 
urban population not within the municipal jurisdiction ; bye- 
laws were passed, to which the courts of laAV very improperly 
gave effect, limiting the right of electing mayors, aldermen, 
and common-councilmen to a select body ; the distinction 
was established between inhabitants and freemen, whereby 
respectable traders, domiciled in the borough, might be de- 
prived of all municipal rights, while strangers, residing in a 
distant part of the kingdom, had a right to vote at all elec- 
tions, if descended from freemen of tbe borough ; there was 
no control over the expenditure of the funds of the borough 
arising from lands or tolls, and a system prevailed among 
almost all the boroughs of the kingdom of the most profligate 
waste, jobbing, corruption, oppression, and misrule. Again, 
towns had sprung up, more populous than London in the 
times of the Plantagenets, which were left without incorpora- 
tion or municipal institutions of any kind, and in which paving, 
cleansing, lighting, supplying with water, loatching, and pre- 
serving the peace were either entirely neglected, or left to con- 
flicting and absurd Acts of Parliament. To investigate and 
suggest a remedy for these multiplied mischiefs, commis- 
sioners had been appointed under Lord Grey's Government. 
They had prepared a very able Eeport upon which a bill was 
about to be drawn at the time of the sudden dismissal of the 
Whigs by William IV. in November, 1834. No one was 
more sensible of the crying necessity for municipal reform 
than Sir Ivobert Peel, or more sincerely desirous to see it 
acconn)lished. Accordingly he introduced a paragraph into 
the King's speech, referring to the report of the commis- 
sioners ; and there can be no doubt that if ho had continued 
in office, a bill very much the same with that which we pro- 
posed would have boon introduced by him, and would have 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHURST. 103 

been supported with warm zeal as well as signal ability by CHAP, 
his Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst. ' 



Lord Melbourne being again at the head of the Govern- a.d. i83: 
ment, notice was given in the House of Commons that 
municipal reform was to be his first measure, and the bill 
for this purpose was framed under my superintendence. 
With a view to correct proved abuses, and to introduce a 
uniform, simple and efficient plan for the government of 
municipalities throughout the kingdom, it certainly dealt 
very freely with existing charters and usages ; but I can 
conscientiously and solemnly say that it was framed without 
any party bias, — purely with a view to the public good. It 
passed through the House of Commons by large majorities. 
Peel very fairly criticising some of its details, but giving it 
his general support. 

When it reached the House of Lords, Lyndhurst vowed its 
destruction. Having a large majority at his beck, the 
systematic policy he adopted was to throw out or damage 
every Government Bill, whatever might be its object or 
merits, as far as he could do so without exciting a loud 
burst of public reprobation against him, and at the end of 
the session to reproach the ministers for not being able to 
carry their measures, and for retaining office without power. 
The Municipal Keform Bill was particularly obnoxious to 
him, for, if carried, it would confer considerable credit upon 
the Whigs, and consolidate the existing coalition between 
them and the Kadicals, who were much pleased with it, 
although they said it was in some of its enactments too 
aristocratic. Lyndhurst, by holding up his finger as a 
signal to the Lords, might have had it utterly rejected on 
the second reading; but he foresaw that this would have 
been quite as serious an aifair in its consequences as the 
rejection of the Parliamentary Keform Bill, and he resorted 
to another mode of defeating it, by allowing it to be read a 
second time, and moving that counsel should be heard, and 
witnesses examined against it, on going into committee. 
These proceedings, he calculated, might be interminably 
prolonged, so as to take away all chance of the bill passing, 
— at least during the then pending Session of Parliament. 



104 EEIGN OF WILLIAM lY. 



CHAP, lu support of this course he argued that, 



A.B. 1835 



As charofes of abuse formed the chief foundation for the 



'tD 



measure, the petitioners against it had a right to be heard, 
His speech and to prove that those charges were unfounded. The only 
his''"? a*^^ f objection to this course was the length of time which it might 
defeating occupy. But Can that delay be called long which justice re- 
the bill. quires ? By this sM^eeping measure 240 corporations were to 
be swept away, — and, as nobody could deny that, if it had been 
directed against one accused corporation, a full hearing must have 
been given, would the House precipitately proceed to condemna- 
tion because delinquency was charged against many ? Were it 
for a party object that the reform of corporations was to be 
effected before a dissolution of Parliament, he and their Lord- 
ships would understand how delay might be dangerous; but, 
investigation must be courted, instead of being resisted, where 
disclosure was not dreaded. The measure was Whig, — Whig in 
its principle, — -Whig in its character, and Whig in its object." 

He then went over the names of the twenty Commissioners, 
and asserted that, with the exception of Sir Francis Palgrave — 
a Tory, who had recommended himself by publishing some- 
thing against corporations — ^each of them was either " a 
Whig," or " a Whig and something more." He again 
ventured to question the validity of the Commission, saying 
that — 

" The noble and learned Lord, who had issued and defended 
it, administered justice admirably in that House ; but that no 
reliance could be placed upon his judgment respecting a question 
of law which assumed a political shape. It was impossible that 
their Lordships could proceed on this Eeport, sent out to the 
public by a packed Commission, such as he had described. They 
were asked, on this evidence, to rob men of their franchise, and 
of their property, without a hearing, and without the form of a 
trial. He would remind their Lordships that these coiporations 
were copies — imperfect copies, he allowed — of the three estates 
of the realm, and yet they were to be annihilated, for what pur- 
pose he could not tell, unless the new corporations were to serve 
as models for a change of constitution in their Lordt;hips' House, 
abolishing the invidious distinction between peer and commoner. 
There would be no defence for the Church, — no defence for their 
own privileges, if they surrendered the corporations to con- 
demnation unheard. l\ui.se, my Lords ; consider. At all events. 



LIFE OF LOED LTNDHUEST. 105 

observe the forms of justice. I know tlie civium ardor prava CHAP. 
Juhentium will not operate here." 

Lord Lansdowne, after expressing astonishment that this a.b. 1835. 
bill should be now described as detestable in its object, and 
unconstitutional in its enactments, although it had passed 
through all its stages in the other House, and had been read 
a second time in this House without a word being said 
against its principle, proceeded to defend the Commissioners 
who had been so vehemently assailed, and to allude to the 
noble and learned Lord's supposed early liberal tendencies : — 

" I can assure the noble and learned Lord, that with the 
politics of the Commissioners I am myself unacquainted ; they 
may be what the noble and learned Lord described them ; but, 
supposing that the noble and learned Lord is quite right in that 
respect, I do not know that the circumstance of a man being or 
having been ' a Whig and something more than a Whig,' dis- 
qualifies him for the exercise of any sort of judicial functions. 
I am afraid that if the circumstance of an individual having 
been ' a Whig and something more,' were to be a disqualification, 
it would reach to much higher and more eminent characters than 
those who have been the subject of the noble and learned Lord's 
insinuations. I must, in justice to individuals, both in this 
House and out of it, express my humble opinion that neither 
Whiggism nor ultra- Whiggism necessarily infers infamy." • 

Lord Lyndhurst. — " I beg to say, in explanation, that I made 
no charge against the Commissioners ; my charge was against 
those who appointed them. Further, I feel that the noble 
Marquis in what he has said of those who were Whigs and some- 
thing more than Whigs, has conveyed an insinuation against me. 
I nev«r belonged to any political party till I came into parlia- 
ment. I never belonged to any political society. I have been 
in parliament sixteen years, and I wish the noble Marquis to 
point out any speech or act of mine which can justify my being 
described as a Whig, or something more than a Whig." 

This must be confessed to be a very lame defence of his 
political consistency, ignoring all that he had said or done 
before he entered Parliament at an age nearly equal to that 
of William Pitt, when that statesman closed his illustrious 
career. However, the motion against the Government was 
carried by a majority of seventy.* 

* 29 Hansard, 1379-1125. 



106 KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP. The speeches of counsel and the evidence against the bill 
' having lasted many days, the Tory Peers themselves became 

A.D. 1835. SO tired and nauseated, that Lyndhurst could not persuade 
them to attend longer, and they seemed ready to give up 
Church and State to Whigs, or the devil himself, rather 
than submit longer to such infliction. Besides, there was 
a terrible cry raised out of doors against this outrageous 
attempt to strangle a popular measure. The evidence was 
therefore closed, and the bill was allowed to go into com- 
mittee. 

p^^"^^"- Here Lyndhurst, according to his preconceived purpose, 



in com 
mittee. 



mutilated it ; and by adding as well as striking out clauses, 
reduced it to such a deplorable state, that in practice it 
could not be ivorlced. The only hope of its friends was that, 
by sending it back to the House of Commons, there might be 
such an expression of opinion there as might induce the 
Lords not to insist upon their amendments. 

After carrying the amendment, by which aldermen were 
to hold their office for life, Lyndhurst came down to me, 
while I was sitting at the bar in Black Kod's box, and said, 
with the grin upon his countenance which makes him so 
like Mephistophiles, " Well, I suppose you think we are 
mad?" I only shook my head. "What! not a smile?" 
I said, " It now becomes too serious ;" and he walked off. 

When the Eeport of the Committee was discussed in the 
House of Lords, Lord Denman, as head of the Common Law, 
considered it his duty to defend the Commissioners, who 
were all barristers, from the aspersions cast upon thorn : — 

Lord Den- " They have been described as entertaining extreme opinions 

man ch;ir_o:os ^^ political siibjccts. Such an imputation is more applicable to 

with incon- the noble and learned person hy whom it has been m;ide. For 

sistency. that noble Lord I have a great respect. I am indebted to him 

personally for a long succession of kindnesses ; but if it be a 

calumny to declare that he has changed his opinions, I am 

bound to say that I make this statement with the most perfect 

good faith, and I believe that such is the conviction of all who 

have known the noble and learned Lord. I must say it is rather 

hard that members of the bar should be thus attacked, in a 

quarter where they have a right to expect protection and favour. 

The Commissioners are men of learning ; the}' are men of 



A.D. 18:->5. 



lurst'; 
defence of 
himself. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 107 

science ; they are men of consistent opinions ; tliey are men CHAP, 
of honourable principles, who have -undertaken an important duty 
with the purpose of performing it honestly to their king and to 
their country. In spite of the insinuations of the noble and 
learned Lord, I do, in my conscience, believe that they have so 
performed it." 

Lord Lyndhui'st. — " When my noble and learned friend the Chief Lyndl: 
Justice throws his arrows in the dark, I know not how to combat 
him. AVhen a fact is stated, I know bow to deny it ; when a 
particular opinion is imputed to me, I know how to repel 
the imputation. I have been on terms of intimacy with my 
no ble and learned friend for a long period ; I went the same 
circuit with him ; I have been engaged in conversation with bim 
at different times ; and if he speaks of a period of twenty years 
past, I can only say I am unable to call to my recollection all 
tbe opinions I may have tben entertained, or all the words I may 
have then uttered; but I am sure that I nevei' belonged to any 
jparty or political society whatever. I was attached to no party, 
neither to the Whigs nor to the Tories, nor (as my noble and 
learned friend would insinuate) to the Kadicals." 

Lord Denman. — " The supposed calumny, which has been so 
often repeated, I stated, believing it to be true ; and I should 
now believe it to be true were it not for the assertion of my 
noble and learned friend. And really I feel somewhat astonished 
that when we are considering what really were the opinions of 
my noble and learned friend on political questions of the greatest 
importance and interest, which divided his contemporaries into 
keenly conflicting parties, he should plead forgetfulness as to the 
opinions which he entertained on these questions — twenty years 
ago undoubtedly — but when he had reached mature years. If 
those opinions are forgotten by himself, they are not forgotten, 
and cannot be forgotten, by others. They were not uttered 
merely in the presence of those who were on terms of close 
intimacy with him, or in the course of private conversation, but 
they were openly avowed rather as if my noble and learned 
friend felt a pride in entertaining and avowing them." * 

When the bill came back to the Commons " amended," or 
mutilated by the Lords, Lord John Kussell, to save the 
dignity of their Lordships, yielded to some of their altera- 
tions of smaller importance, protesting that he did not agree 
with them, but strenuously resisted those which would have 

* 30 Hansard. 1042. 



108 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1835. 

Peel takes 
part against 
Lyndhurst 
on the Mu- 
nicipal Coi'- 
porations 
Bill. 



Lyndhurst 
^'indicates 
his conduct. 



completely obstructed its operation ; and Sir Eobert Peel, 
to his immortal honour, thro\Ying his Chancellor overboard, 
took part with the Government. But what was to become 
of the bill when the Commons in conference informed the 
Lords that the Commons disagreed with these amendments ? 
Lyndhurst w^as alarmed lest there should be a public 
disturbance if the bill were lost, and began to consider that if 
he came to a downright quarrel with Peel, his chance of 
resuming the Great Seal, when the country should get tired 
of the AVhigs, was gone. He therefore advised the Lords 
not to insist on the amendments to which the Commons 
dissented. Thus he concluded a very shuffling speech : — 

" Yonr Lordships must be aware how much I have been 
assailed during these discussions, both in and out of Parliament, 
on account of the course which I have felt it my duty to pursue 
with regard to this Bill. Allow me to saj^, that I should not be 
ashamed to have been a volunteer in my attacks upon it ; but the 
fact is, that I have been no volunteer. Many noble Lords with 
whom I have been in the habit of acting for years, and who 
thought that from my pr<.>fessional habits I was calculated to lead 
their efforts, requested me to take the management of the opposition 
to it. I yielded to their solicitations ; and, having done so, I 
have endeavoured to discharge my duty to them, and to my 
country, firmly, strenuously, and to the best of my abilit}". I 
have been charged with having some party views to accomplish, 
some indirect ambition to gratify by this opposition. I deny it 
once and for ever ; all my ambition has long been satisfied. 
I have twice, to borrow a phrase from these municipal pro- 
ceedings, passed that chair [pointing to the woolsack], under two 
successive sovereigns. I have had, to borrow a phrase from a 
successfid revolutionary usurper, that splendid bauble [pointing 
to the mace* which lay on the woolsack] carried before me. 
Whatever ambitious views I may have had in early life havo 
all been fulfilled."! 

Notwithstanding these asseverations of satiated ambition, 
the Gr(!at Seal was an object as near his heart as when he 
first made his famous speech against Catholic emancipation, 
and liis famous speech for Catholic emancipation. Power and 

* Tho Great Scnl, boini; then in commission, was in tlio custody of Sir 
Cliarles Pcpys, Mat^tcr of the KoUs, the lir.st Commissioner ; and Lord Dcumau 
oHieiated as Speaker. f 30 Haii.^.iinl, 13oL 



• LIFE OF LOED LTNDHURST. 109 

patronage were sweeter to him ''from having tasted them, CHAP, 
and the emoluments of office were more than ever necessary ' 



to him, on account of the expensive establishment he had to a.d. 1835. 
support. But his head had been turned by the unlimited 
sway which he had established in the Upper House ; and he 
appears actually to have had thoughts of turning off Peel, 
and setting up for himself as leader of the Tory party. 
When the Municipal Keform Bill was in the Committee, I 
took him aside and reproached him with striking out clauses 
which Peel had approved of, and supported in the Commons. 

His only answer was, " Peel ! what is Peel to me ? D n 

Peel ! ! ! " This, however, might be only badinage, intimating 
that he would not be slavishly led by Peel, although he 
might still consider him head of the party. 

The bill received the Eoyal Assent, and Parliament was Sept. lo. 
jDrorogued on the 10th of September. 

Before the session closed Brougham and Lyndhurst were Lyndhurst 
so far. reconciled that they spoke to each other in private on BiouX.m 
a familiar footing, and Lvndhurst embraced the opportunity ^''^^ ^ ^■^■ 
01 trymg to mcense Brougham more keenly agamst Lord that Camp- 
Melbourne and his former colleagues for excluding him ?^ch"^ ^^ 
from office, and against me, upon the alleged ground that ceiior. 
I was plotting to obtain possession of the Great Seal. 
I remember once, after arguing a case at the bar of the 
House of Lords, coming upon the steps of tlie throne in 
my silk gown and full-bottom wig (such as the Chancellor 
wears), wishing to have an opportunity of speaking to I^ord 
Melbourne. I then heard Lord Lyndhurst halloo out to 
Lord Brougham, so as almost to be heard distinctly in the 
gallery, "Brougham, here is Campbell come to take his 
seat as Chancellor upon the woolsack." The Duke of Cum- 
berland (afterwards King of Hanover) was standing close by, 
and Lyndhurst said to him, in Brougham's hearing, "Sir, 
this is Sir John Campbell, now Attorney General, who is 
very soon to be our Chancellor." As yet Brougham had 
been hushed into a sort of feverish lepose by the tale that 
his reappointment to his former office was deferred on accoimt 
of some personal pique of the King, which they ho2)ed ere 
long to overcome. 



110 REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. * 

^^^^- A calm preyailecl till the beginning of another year ; but 

before parliament again met it was indispensably necessary 

A.D. 1836. that a new arrangement should be made with respect to the 
Great Seal, and that some one should be fixed upon for 
Chancellor, as the business of the Court of Chancery had 
been disposed of in a very unsatisfactory manner by the 
Lords Commissioners, and the judicial business in the House 
of Lords had, during the preceding session, been almost 
entirely neglected between the two ex-Chancellors, Lynd- 
hurst and Brougham. The newspaper press was loud in its 
complaints, and Sir Edward Sugden (afterwards Lord St. 
Leonards) had published a pamphlet, to show the necessity 
for a change. 

Lord Melbourne now announced to me that Brougham 
could not be reappointed, saying, with deep emphasis — " It is 
impossible to act with him ; " and stated the plan proposed 
to be, that Pepys should be Chancellor, and that Bickersteth 
should succeed him as Master of the Kolls, with a peerage. 
He tried to smooth me by a declaration, that he and all his 
colleagues set so high a value on my services in the House of 
Commons, that they could not spare me from tliat field in 
which the real battle was to be fought. In truth, the battle 
most dreaded was in the House of Lords ; for it was well 
foreseen, that Brougham's exclusion from office would drive 
him into furious opposition ; and, Pepys being known to be 
very feeble in debate, the object was to select an assistant 
champion for the defence of the Government. A most unfor- 
tunate choice was made, and it was very speedily repented of. 
Lyndhurst The cousequenco was, that in the ensuing session of Par- 
House of liament Lyndhurst was compared to " a bull in a china shop." 
Lords "like Brougham took his exclusion so much to heart, and was so 

a bull in a " 

china sho].." much depressed, tliat his health suffered. Ins reason was in 
danger, and he remained in seclusion at his house in West- 
morland. The new Chancellor, although an excellent Equity 
Judge, could hardly put two sentences together in the House 
of Lords; and the new Master of the l\olls, under the title of 
Lord Langdale, according to his own confession — " when he 
rose to speak, did not kiK)w^ wliether his head or his heels 
were uppermost," and, intending to sujiport ministers, unin- 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. Ill 

tentionally inflicted a mortal wound on a Chancery Keform CHAP. 
Bill, which they had introduced. Lyndhurst, under these ' 



circumstances, took advantage of his position, laying down a.d. 1836. 
for law what suited his purpose, and making very unfair 
attacks upon members of the Government who belonged to 
the other house of parliament. 

A bill for disfranchising the borough of Stafford offered 
him irresistible temptation to assail the Attorney General, 
under pretence of defending him. Although the fact was 
well known that every member who had sat for Stafford 
during the last hundred years had paid " head-money " to the 
voters as regularly as he paid fees to the officers of the House 
of Commons when he was sworn in, and it had been proved 
before the committee that Sir John Campbell had conformed 
to the usage, yet Lyndhurst pretended to disbelieve this evi- 
dence, and opposed the farther progress of the bill, unless 
the preamble were proved by witnesses examined on oath 
at the bar. 

" Why, my Lords," said he, with affected solemnity, while His renewed 
there was a broad grin upon the face of every other peer present, attack on 
" in the evidence on which you are asked to pass this bill, a case ney General 
of the grossest bribery and corruption is made out against his for bribeiy 
Majesty's Attorney General. Will your Lordships assume that 
charge to be established without affording to Mr. Attorney the 
opportunity of appearing at your bar to defend himself against an 
accusation so grave ? 1 am making no rash or unfounded asser- 
tion. I will read to your Lordships that part of the evidence 
which must induce your Lordships unanimously to invite him to 
refute the calumny : — 

" Q. ' Have you any knowledge of any bribery or corrupt 
practices having taken place at the last election, or any previous 
election for Stafford? — A. Kot at the last; but at Sir John 
Campbell's in 1831. 

" Q. ' What are you? — A. I am a solicitor b}^ profession. 

" Q. ' Do you know of voters being paid ? — A. I paid them 
myself at Sir John Campbell's election. 

" Q. ' In what interest were you ? — A. In Sir John Campbell's. 

" Q. ' How many did you pay? — A. 531 out of 556. 

" Q. ' What was the sum of money paid ? — A. £3 10s. for a single 
vote, and £6 for a plumper. 



112 EEIGX OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP. « Q, ' Did you pay every voter ? — A. There were bo6 voters, 



VI 



and 531 I paid.' 



A.D. 1836. ''That solicitor there clearly imputes to the Attorney 
General the infamous crime of bribery and corruption. A 
Stafford banker follows, who says, that ' Sir John Campbell, 
while a candidate, had drawn upon their bank to the amount 
of thousands of pounds.' But it is impossible for your Lord- 
ships, upon such an improbable tale, to proceed to the dis- 
franchisement of this borough."! 

Lvndhuvst's As the sessioii advanced — Lyndhnrst findins^ that he had 
obstructive si;ipj;ejjie sway in the House of Lords, and that, by reason of 
the growing unpopularity of the ministry, the obstruction 
of their measures, even the most sabatary, caused little public 
indignation, — hardly any Government bills were allowed to 
pass. Some were pusillanimously surrendered as soon as an 
intimation was given by the " Obstructor General " that they 
were not approved. But several, which I had introduced, and 
carried through the House of Commons, I insisted that Lord 
Melbourne should struggle for to the last. The object of 
these was to remedy the mutilations which the jMunicipai 
Keform Bill had suffered in the last session, and to supply 
defects which experience had proved to lessen its utility, 
Lyndhurst smashed them all, without discrimination and 
without remorse. Peel still supporting us upon this subject, 
we persisted in the attempt to carry our Bill, the necessity 
for which was most pressing and most palpable, till there 
was a collision between the two Houses such as had not 
occurred since the time of the Eevolution in 1689. Each 
refusing to give way, and no effect being produced by reasons 
assigned in writing at close conferences, we at last came to 
an open conference in the Painted Chamber, which was con- 
ducted according to the ancient forms. Que peer being 

* This witness bad betrayed me, and gone over to tbe enemy. Tbis part 
of bis evidence, bowever, was quite true. 

t 32 Hansard, 1005. 

Extract from a letter to my brother, dated 12/// Jidy, 1S3G :— 

" I was in tbe House of TiOrds in a peerayje case to-day. I asked Lyndhurst 
if be thought it a magnanimous warfjire whicli the House of Lords was 
carrying on against me. He protested ignorance uiany bad design, and swore 
that all he had said was in fmi." 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 113 

considered equal to two commoners, we, the managers for the CHAP. 
Lower House, were twice as numerous as the managers for ' 

the Upper House ; but, considered little better than a mob, a.d. 1836. 
we stood bareheaded, while their Lordships sat covered. The 
debate was a sharp one, although conducted with decorum, and 
we certainly had the best of the argument. As might easily 
have been foreseen, no converts were made, and on our return 
to our own House we soon had a message from the Lords that 
" their Lordships still insisted on their amendments," which 
nullified the bill. It was then abandoned, amidst bitter com- 
plaints against their Lordships and their factious adviser. 
These at last found sympathy with the public, and Lyndhurst 
was severely blamed by the press and at public meetings. 

In the hope of palliating his conduct, a few days before the Lyndhurst's 
conclusion of the Session, he delivered one of his ablest and theSessi^n." 
most memorable speeches. A few specimens will show 
sufficiently its tone and character : — 

" It is with extreme reluctance that I rise to addi'ess you on 18th Aug. 
this occasion ; but I am charged with having ' mutilated ' bills 
laid on your Lordships' table by his Majesty's Government. 
A noble Lord has stated in distinct terms that the course which 
I have individually pursued has been calculated to alienate from 
your Lordships' House the regard and the respect of the country. 
It is obvious that these charges are to take a wider range than 
the circle in which I move, and to make a lasting impression 
against me in the minds of all whom my name has ever reached. 
Therefore have I felt myself called upon to rise for the purpose 
of entering on a vindication of my character, which has been so 
unjustly assailed." 

He proceeds to contend generally that he, and those with 
Avhom he acted, constituted the mildest, the most forbearing, 
the most disinterested, and the most constitutional opposition 
ever known since Parliaments began, and thus prepares for 
an illustration of his merits on particular occasions : — 

" My Lords, it is impossible to take a view, however slight, of 
the discussion in which we have been engaged, without referring 
to his Majesty's speech at the commencement of the Session, and 
without contrasting the brilliant anticipations with which we 
began, with the sad reality which we have since -had to deplore. 
The result has been as disproportioned in execution to the 

VOL. Yin. I 



A.D. 1836. 



114 REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, expectations whicli were held out, as the lofty position of the noble 
Viscount at that period with what he will allow me to style his 
humble condition at the present moment. Gazing on these two 
pictures, one is tempted to apply to the noble Viscount that 
which was said of a predecessor of the noble Viscount in the 
high office of first Minister of the Crown, who, in the careless 
confidence of his character, I cannot help thinking, bore some 
resemblance to his noble successor : — 

' His promises were as lie then was — mighty ; 
But his performance as he is now — nothing.' " 

Lyndhurst then goes over seriatim the various measures 
recommended in the King's Speech, and shows that, not- 
withstanding his desire to support them as far as he could 
conscientiously, they had either entirely miscarried in Parlia- 
ment, or had been partially adopted in an altered form. Thus 
he perorates : — 

" In former times, my Lords, amid such defeats and disasters, 
and unable to carry those measures which he considered essential 
and necessary, a minister would have thought that he had only 
one course to pursue. These are antiquated notions — everything 
has changed. This fastidious delicacy forms no part of the 
character of the noble Viscount. He has told us, and his acts 
correspond with his assertions, that, notwithstanding the in- 
subordination which prevails around him, in spite of the sullen 
and mutinous temper of his crew, he will stick to the vessel 
while a single plank remains afloat. Let me, however, as a 
friendly adviser of the noble Viscount, recommend him to get her 
as speedily as possible into still water. 

' Fortiter occupa 
Portum.' 

" Let the noble Viscount look to the empty benches around him. 

' . . . nonne vicles, ut 
Nudum rcmigio latus, 

ac sine funibus 

Vix diu-are carinse 

Possint imperiosius 
Acquor ? ' 

After all, there is something in the eiforts and exertions of the 
noble Viscount not altogether unamusing. It is impossible, 
under any circumstances, not to respect 

' A bravo man struggling in the storms of fate.' 
]\Iay a part, at least, of what follows be averted : — 

* And greatly fulling with a falling state.' 



A.D. 1836. 



LIFE OF LOED LTNDHUEST. 115 

"My consolation is, that whatever be the disposition of the CHAP, 
noble Yisconnt, he has not sufficient strength, though his locks, 
I believe, are yet nn shorn, to pnll down the pillars of the building, 
and involve the whole in his ruin. I trust it will long survive 
his fall." 

It was supposed that he would conclude by moving an 
address to the King- " to remove his present Ministers from 
his presence and councils for ever;" but the actual motion 
(which caused considerable merriment) was for " a return of 
the public bills which had been introduced into Parliament 
during the present Session, with the dates of their being 
rejected or abandoned, or receiving the royal assent." 

Lord Holland expressed some astonishment that the noble 
Lord, instead of being ashamed of the devastation he had 
committed in the Parliamentary campaign, seemed to glory 
in his exploits, and to have made this motion that he might 
have an opportunity of recapitulating them, like Alexander 
at the famous " feast for Persia won " : — 

" Soothed with the sound the King grew vain, 
Fought all Ms battles o'er again, 
And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain." 

Lord Melbourne. — " I readily admit the great powers and Lord Mel- 

bo'.irne's 
I'eply to 



eloquence possessed by the noble and learned Lord opposite 
his clearness in argument and his dexterity in sarcasm cannot him. 
be denied ; and if the noble and learned Lord will be satisfied with 
a compliment confined strictly to ability, I am ready to render 
that homage to hjm. But, my Lords, ability is not everything 
— propriety of conduct — the verecundia — should be combined 
with the ingenium, to make a great man and a statesman. It is 
not enough to be durce frontis, jperditce audacice. The noble and 
learned Lord has referred to various historical characters, to 
whom he has been pleased to say that I bear some resemblance. 
I beg in return to refer him to what was once said by the Earl 
of Bristol of another great statesman of former times (the Earl of 
Strafford), to whom, I think, the noble and learned Lord might 
not inapplicably be compared. ' The malignity of his practices 
was hugely aggravated by his vast talents, whereof God had 
given him the use, but the devil the application.' "What must 
the House think of the noble and learned Lord when he con- 
cludes his speech with a miserable motion for returns, which, 
from the numerous minute details entered upon by him in the 

I 2 



116 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, course of his address, lie seems to be familiarly acquainted with, 
and to have been long conning over ? " 

A.D. 1836. Lord Melbourne then, in what was considered the best 
speech he ever delivered, went through the bills which Lynd- 
hurst had factiously defeated, showing that several of the 
most important of them had been supported by the great 
bulk of the Conservative party in the other House, and thus 
concluded : — 

" The noble and learned Lord kindly advises me to resign, 
notwithstanding his own great horror of taking office after his 
ambition is alreadj^ so fully satisfied. But I will tell the noble 
and learned Lord that I will not be accessary to the sacrifice of 
himself which he would be ready to make if the duties of the Great 
Seal were again forced upon him. I conscientiously believe that 
the well-being of the country requires that I should hold my 
present office — and hold it I will — till I am constitutionally 
removed from it." * 

The debate being over, the desperate audacity of the noble 
and learned Lord was converted into a good-humoured smile, 
and, going over to Lord Melbourne, they laughed and joked 
together, both pleased with themselves, thinking that in 
this rencontre each had tilted to the admiration of the by- 
standers. 
Lyndhurst I ought to have mentioned that, during this session, Lynd- 
PrKer's^^ hurst did support one good measure, which he had formerly 
Counsel violently opposed — the bill for allowing prisoners the benefit 
answering of couuscl on all Criminal trials. Fortunately, this time it 
s"\cTa-^ was not brought in by the Government, and Lyndhurst now 
gainst it. said that " withholding from prisoners in any case the aid of 
counsel was a disgraceful remnant of our barbarous criminal 
code ; " and, without ever alluding to the fact that he had 
before opposed the Bill totis viribus, ho gave an admirable 
answer to all his former arguments against it. 
A.D. 1837. In 1837 the House of Lords assumed a now aspect, and 
Coalition of Lyudhurst i^ained a most formidable allv, of wlioso assistance 

Lvndnurst ./ o .- ' 

and ho unsparingly availed himself, it' he had anything to say or 

SistX *^ ^^ ^^ which he was ashamed. Brougham was, at last, 
Govern- convinced that what had been hinted to him about " superable 

ment. 

♦ 35 IlanHonl, 12S2. 



LIFE OF LOED LTNDHUKST. 117 

objections" in the roval mind was pure fiction, and that the CHAP. 
Whio: leaders were determined never asfain to sit with him in 



the Cabinet. After a very narrow escape from insanity, a.d. 183 
having recovered both his physical and intellectual vigour, 
he returned to London, breathing revenge against his former 
associates. Lyndhurst not only incensed him still more by 
an exaggerated statement of his wrongs, but ambiguously 
held out to him vague hopes of being taken up by the 
Conservatives. Said he^ " We are no longer to be considered 
Tories ; we are actually more inclined to reform than the 
Whig party when you first joined it, — so that you may now 
coalesce with us without inconsistency, — leaving the apostate 
Whigs under the bondage of O'Connell and the ultra-Eadicals." 
What other arguments were used, I know not, and it would 
be idle to conjecture ; but certain it is that Lyndhurst soon 
acquired a complete ascendancy over Brougham's mind, which 
he has preserved, in a great degree, down to the present 
time. One art has been used, very palpably, by Lyndhurst, — 
to make Brougham believe that he influences Lyndhurst, 
and that Lyndhurst, whether in office or not, in point of con- 
sideration in the House of Lords, is contented to be second to 
him, but at a long interval. Lyndhurst pretended to abdicate 
the lead of the House of Lords in his favour, and, urging him 
to do what would be annoying to the Government, himself 
remained silent. When they were both standing together 
at the bar, I asked Lyndhurst what he now meant to do about 
the Irish Municipal Eeform Bill, which he had contrived to 
defeat in the two preceding sessions. "Me !" exclaimed he, 
" what I mean to do ! I never open my mouth now, and I 
oppose nothing. Ask Brougham, there, what he means to do. 
He is the man now\ Brougham, lend me your majority — 
and ' I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.' " 

Assuredly he did long preserve a most wonderful reticence ; 
but upon the motion for going into committee on this very 
bill, he again broke out, delivering a long and furious speech 
against it, or rather against its authors : — 

" If the bill deserved all the praises bestowed upon it, what 
is the situation in which his Majesty's ministers stand? In 
no former period of our history has the government of this 



A.D. 1837, 



118 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, countiy been placed in such a position. To whom do they 
' look for support ? To the enemies of the Protestant Establish- 
ment. In Ireland their supporters are composed of the declared 
enemies of the Protestant Church in that country. In England 
the Dissenters are their chief friends and patrons. Deprive 
them of such supporters, and what becomes of the Govern- 
ment? They feel that they are gone, and that they cannot 
float or draw breath a minute longer. My Lords, where is 
this to stop ? Concession leads to concession. When will the 
noble Viscount stop in his downward career? The Minis- 
terialists themselves say ' AVe will receive all you offer, but 
we will take it only as an instalment, and we will never cease 
agitating till the Protestant Church is laid prostrate.' And this, 
the noble Viscount tells us, is the only mode of governing Ireland. 
It seems, my Lords, that we Protestant Englishmen are to be 
governed by those who are aliens in hlood, in language, in religion.'^* 

However, the friends of Sir Eobert Peel, guided by his 
example, and alarmed for the consequences if the bill 
were again rejected, refused to stand by Lyndhurst any 
longer, and the bill was allowed to pass with a few slight 
mutilations. 
Bill to abo- Lyndhurst was about this time much alarmed by a bill I 
sonment'for ^^^ introduced to abolish imprisonment for debt, and to pro- 
debt, yide a more efficient remedy for creditors, by the personal 
examination of the debtor as to his property and his past 
expenditure. As the bill originally stood, there was no 
limit to this power of inquiry, and every one was subject 
to it against whom a judgment was recovered. The stories 
about executions in Lyndhurst's house, I believe, were un- 
founded ; but he was still needy from inconsiderate expendi- 
ture, and it was by no means clear that a judgment for 
a debt might not have been suddenly obtained against 
him. He came privately to me, and pointed out the 
oppression and extortion which might be practised by the 
power proposed to be given to judgment creditors, and insisted 
tliat, as the members of the two llousos wiM'e not subject to 
imprisonment for debt, tliey ought not to be subject to the 
inquisition substituted for it. There seemed to me to be 
reason in wliat he said, and I agreed to liave the ob- 

* 38 Hansard. 130S. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 119 

noxious clause amended ; but, as expressly to exempt peers CHAp. 
and members of the House of Commons from the pressure ' 



tona. 



intended to compel the payment of just debts, as far as means a.d. 1837. 
existed, might have appeared invidious, we altered the enact- 
ment so as to gain our object, and finally the bill passed. 

William lY. was now dying, and the Tories sanguinely i>e.ith of 
looked forward to the commencement of a new reign. The Accession of 
power of the Crown in choosing ministers has been so much Q^f^" ^^ic- 
reduced that the Sovereign of England may be aptly com- 
pared to the marker in a billiard-room, who looks on, and 
declares which competitor has won the game. Still, on rare 
occasions, when parties are nearly balanced, the royal will 
for a time prevails. The Whigs, retaining a considerable 
majority in the House of Commons, had, by resisting the 
unreasonable zeal of the ultra-Eadicals for reforms incon- 
sistent with our balanced constitution, lost popularity, and 
now a strong government might have been formed under 
Sir Kobert Peel, who would have coerced the ultra-Tories 
led by Lord Lyndhurst. The Princess Victoria had cautiously 
abstained from indicating any political bias, and the Tories, 
hoping that she would prove to be theirs, extravagantly 
praised her nascent virtues. Terrible was their disappoint- 
ment when it was announced that Lord Melbourne was to 
continue Prime Minister ; and that, moreover, personally she 
felt a filial regard for him which, now tliat she was on the 
throne, she took no pains to conceal. A storm of vilification 
arose against her which was very discreditable to the Tory 
party. The practice was to contrast her invidiously with 
Adelaide, the Queen Dowager, and at public dinners to receive 
the Queen's health with solemn silence, while the succeeding 
toast of the Queen Dowager was the signal for long-continued 
cheers. Some writers went so far as to praise the Salic law, by 
which females are excluded from the throne, pointing out the 
happiness we should liave enjoyed under the rule of the Duke 
of Cumberland, now King of Hanover, but consoling the nation 
by the assurance that his line would soon succeed, as the new 
Queen, from physical defects, could never bear children.* 

♦ Croker, in the 'Quarterly Ecvicw,' distinctly eulogised the Salic law, 
leaving the personal vituperation of the Queen to inferior hands. 



120 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP. I must do Lyndhurst the justice to say, that he not only 
' did not encourage, but that he sincerely lamented all these 



A.D. 1837. foolish outrages, confining himself to what maybe considered 
Lyndhurst's fair parliamentary warfare. Before the impending dissolution 
the Session. ^^ took his annual reyiew of the session, saying : — 

" They were now at the close of the fifth month of the session 
of Parliament, and not a single important bill had been yet 
passed into law. They literally had done nothing during the 
five months they had been assembled. As far as legislation was 
concerned — and it was one of the most important duties of 
government — they had done nothing." 

Then, more suo, having gone over the measures recom- 
mended from the Throne, the bills brought in, and the mise- 
rable fate which they experienced, he thus concluded : — 

" The noble Yiscount and his colleagues are utterly powerless. 
They are utterly inefficient and incompetent as servants to the 
Crown, and I must add also they are equally inefficient and 
incompetent as regards the people. Being now compelled to 
say so much respecting legislation, I abstain for the present from 
considering the foreign policy of the noble Lord and his col- 
leagues, and I will only say that all reasonable men have but 
one opinion of them — one idea is entertained respecting their 
conduct. It elicits the pity of their friends, and excites the 
scorn and derision of the enemies of our country. Such being 
the past and the present, what hope is there for the future? 
From the noble Viscount and his party there is no hope. But I 
do not entirely despair. A ray of hope breaks in upon us from 
another quarter, and I trust that at no distant period the alarm 
and apprehension on account of the danger to which the Church 
establishment in this country is exposed will be dissipated, and 
that perfect security will be given to the Protestant faith to 
which the great bulk of her Majesty's subjects are so warmly 
attached." * 

His second Lord Lyndliurst had for some time been a gay widower, 
but being at Paris in the autumn of 1837, he fell in love 
with a beautiful Jewess. He gave her his hand, and spent 
the honeymoon with her at Fontainebleau. He used to give 
a glowing description of his happiness there, and she con- 
tinued to make him a most excellent wife. She was the 

* 38 Hansard, 15G8. 



marriage. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUKST. 121 

daugliter of Lewis Goldsmith, a Portuguese Jew, once famous CHAP, 
as the author of a Jacobinical, or rather regicidalj book — ' 



*The Crimes of Cabinets' — and who had been employed pri- a.d. 1837. 
yately by all the great governments of Europe. Although 
the new Lady Lyndhurst, like her predecessor, tried to 
become a leader of fashion, she preserved an unsuspected 
reputation, and took devoted care of her husband, who, 
notwithstanding the juvenility of his mind and of his habits, 
was now sinking into the vale of years. 

During the following year the ray of hope, alluded to by a.d. 1838. 
Lord Lyndhurst in his last speech, shone very faintly. The 
Queen continued to support Lord Melbourne, and he, by his 
very agreeable manners and excellent good sense, with the 
j)Owerful help of Lord John Kussell, tided over the session 
pretty smoothly. To be sure, the House of Lords was in a 
state of sad insubordination, and there we were at the mercy 
of our antagonists. The Chancellor (Lord Cottenham), with 
rising reputation as an Equity Judge, showed no improve- 
ment as a debater, and avoided any conflict with Brougham 
as with an evil spirit. Set on by Lyndhurst, Brougham now 
only considered how he could annoy and embarrass the 
Government most effectually. He did not profess to join 
the Tories, and was sometimes ultra-Radical in the principles 
he professed ; but, whatever the Whigs did, his object was to 
show that, since they ceased to be guided by him, they 
were the most weak, ignorant, blundering, unconstitutional, 
wretched, and contemptible set of men on whom chance had 
ever conferred power. The rebellion in Canada having 
broken out, there were frequent discussions upon colonial Bad law 
and international law, in which Brougham, as suited the in debate by 
i)urpose of the moment, would lay down the most extra- Brougham 

• -T 1 rrn T TIT attheinsti- 

vagant juridical doctrines. These Lyndhurst, I believe, gatiou of 
secretly prompted ; but although he never questioned them, ^^y'^^^^^^'^^- 
he never openly corroborated them, for he was very chary 
of his reputation as a lawyer, and w^ould always keep within 
the boundary which he encouraged others to transgress. 
Brougham was now by far the more conspicuous ex-Chan- 
cellor of the two, and Lyndhurst, delighted by observing 
how perseveringly the Government was disparaged, re- 



122 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP, mained silent. Satisfied mth what he had done by proxy, 
' he did not even, this year, finish with *'a review of the 



A.D. 1839. In the following year Lyndhurst was cruelly tantalized. 
Growing f^p ^]^g Great Seal was not only visibly approaching him, but 
larity of the he had almost grasped it, when it was suddenly withdrawn 
Govern-"^ from him, and he despondingly thought that it could never 
ment. more be his. Lord Melbourne's Government was now becoming 

very weak. His alleged league with O'Connell, called the 
"Lichfield House Compact," was very unpopular. In his 
heart much more Conservative than Sir Eobert Peel, he 
seemed occasionally to be ultra-Eadical ; and he did not pro- 
ceed on any settled policy, but shaped his measures so 
as best to preserve a majority in the House of Commons. 
Contented with his own position and duties, he left the 
heads of departments to do as they liked. Dining almost 
constantly with the Queen, he neglected a most imjoortant 
duty of a prime minister — to give dinners to his supporters. 
Peel, on the contrary, by his assiduous attendance in the 
House of Commons, by avoiding grossly factious opposition, 
by the liberal indications he disclosed, and by the admirable 
dinners which he gave to all men of any eminence who were 
inclined towards him, stood very high in public opinion, and 
might be expected soon to command a majority in both 
Houses. 
Discussion Lyndhurst opened the campaign in the Lords by bringing 
hurstcaiimg ^ cliargc agaiust the Government for the appointment of the 
the Irish ^^yI Qf Fortescue as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the ground 
blood, hm- being that he was unfit for this or any office under the 
feli'Toir"^ Crown, because, when a member of the House of Commons 
(under the title of Lord Ebrington), in speaking upon a bill 
for the better collection of tithes in Ireland, he was reported 
to have said, " I do not approve of the bill itself, but I support 
it because I am satisfied that the effect of it will be to render 
the war now raging against the Protestant Church in Ireland 
more formidable." The first move was by putting a ques- 
tion to Lord Melbourne — " Whether, when he recommended 
that noble lord to fill the situation of Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland, he was aware of the noble lord having used such 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 123 

language." Lord Fortescue was absent, but Lord Lansdowne ^-^f^-^' 
defended bim, and concluded with the observation that, "if ' 



there was a noble lord in that House who was eminently a.d. i839. 
interested in not having a particular expression which was 
used in one of the Houses of Parliament treated as a disquali- 
fication for office, that individual was the noble and learned 
lord himself." 

Lord Lyndhurst. — " I beg, with all deference and submission 
to the noble Marquess, to state that I am not ashamed of any 
expression ever used by me in any debate either in this or the 
other House of Parliament. I am aware of the expression to 
which the noble Lord alludes, and I have over and over again 
explained the sense in which I used it. If the expression used 
by the new Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was known to those who 
recommended him to the office, I am justified in saying that his 
appointment is a declaration of war on the part of the Govern- 
ment against the Protestant Church of Ireland." 

Lord Brougham. — " Allusion is made to a speech made by my 
noble and learned friend three years ago ; but there is this 
difference between the two cases, that my noble and learned 
friend has denied that speech." 

Lord Lansdowne. — " He has not denied a word of it." 

Lord Lyndliurst. — " The sense in which I used the expression 
referred to I have already fully explained. I had the choice of 
two expressions ; I might have made use of the word ' race,' but 
I spoke of ' aliens' and in what signification I have repeatedly 
stated." 

On a subsequent day Lord Fortescue, having taken his . 
seat in the House of Lords, fully explained the words he had 
used on the occasion referred to, and showed that they 
had been entirely misrepresented. Lyndhurst being again 
taunted with his denunciation of the Irish as " aliens in blood, 
language, and religion," he very candidly said : — 

" My lords, considering the impression which that language 
has created in Ireland — considering the use that has been made 
of it — considering the odium that has been cast upon me in* 
consequence of it, I say, in answer to the question put to me, 
that I should consider it a decided disqualification to me for 
holding that appointment." * 



* 45 Hansard, 950, 1144. Lyndhurst made a poor excuse for his inchscrc- 
tion by saying that although he called the Irish aliens, he did not mean to use 



124 ' EETGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP. There was a suspension of hostilities in the House of Lords ; 

' but in the House of Commons there were keen struggles 

A.D. 1839. every evening, the Ministerialists becoming constantly weaker 

6th May. and at last they suffered what they considered an entire defeat 

^f T^"^^^^^ on the Jamaica Bill. As we had still a majority of five, I said 

Melbourne, to Lord Melbourne, on accidentally meeting him next 

morning, ''We must celebrate our victory of last night in 

pentameters." Lord Melbourne. — " We are all out, and you 

are again plain John Campbell." He had been with the 

Queen, and had tendered the resignation of all the members 

of the Cabinet, which had been accepted. Not the smallest 

difficulty was anticipated in any quarter in the formation of 

the new government. 

New Go- Vqq\ retained his distrust of Lyndhurst, but, considering 

upset by dis- his asccndancy in the House of Lords, could not possibly 

pute about |]^Q^y \^{j^ aside. So it was at once arrano-ed that he should 

ladies or the o 

bedchamber, resumo the Great ^eal, and his name was put second in the 
list of members of the new Cabinet submitted to her Majesty, 
to which she made no objection. Lyndhurst was very much 
elated, and through a common friend entered into a negoti- 
ation with Lord Cottenham for fixing the day when the 
transfer of the Great Seal should take place, a complimentary 
hint being thrown out that an early day would probably not 
be inconvenient to Lord Cottenham, as he had so few judg- 
ments in arrear. Two days after, I called on Lord Cotten- 
ham to arrange some matters with him upon our retirement. 
On entering I said, *' I had just heard a rumour that there 
was a screw loose in the new Government." " A screw loose," 
said he [the only time in all my life I ever knew him to be 
excited — now he flourished his hand over his head] — '* a screw 
loose in the new Government! It has all fallen to pieces, 
and we are in again stronger than ever." Next evening 
came explanations in the two Houses of Parliament about the 

" aliens " in its nsual sense. He should boldly have justified himself by the 
well-known passngo from Sir John Davies, "The mere Irish were not only 
accounted aliens, but enemies, so as it was no ca]iital olVenco to kill them." 
In Sir John Davies' Jlcports may bo seen a plea of justilioation to an indict- 
ment for murder in Inland, that the deceased was a mere Irishman, mere 
Jfibernicus. The i)lea l)eing allowed to bo gootl in law, issue is joined upon 
the fact whether the deceased was one of the Aborigines, so as to make his 
death a case of "killin.ir no murder." 



LIFE OF LOED LTNDHUKST. ' 125 

removal of the Ladies of the Bedchamber, the Queen's letter CHAP, 
to Sir Eobert Peel, written by the advice of her former ' 



servants, stating that " she could not consent to a course a.d. 1839. 
which she conceived to be contrary to usage, and which was 
repugnant to her feelings," and the famous Cabinet minute 
that " the principle of removing the household on a change 
of Government ought not to be applied or extended to the 
oJBfices held by ladies in her Majesty's household." 

There had been no actual surrender of the emblems of 
office, nor formal appointment of successors; so the march 
of government was resumed as if it had met with no inter- 
ruption. I happened to be standing below the bar of the 
House of Lords on the first day that Lyndhurst showed him- 
self after his disappointment. He was approaching me on 
his way to his seat, not on the woolsack, but on one of the 
back benches, which he usually occupied, and which I used 
to tell him was called " the Castle of Obstruction." He 
was afraid to meet my eye, and he tried to pass me as if I 
had been a stranger. I merely whispered in his ear, " How 
sadly Peel bungled it ! — when we next resign you must take 
the construction of the new Government (all the ladies of the 
household included) into your own hands." He silently 
shook his head, and passing within the bar, again took the 
command of his stronghold. 

However, he fired very few shots from it for the remainder 
of this campaign, till he finished off with his grand review. 

To me he intimated an opinion that we could not last 
through the Session, and that Peel would immediately have 
everything so completely his own way, that, in forming a new 
Government, he could not again "bungle it." Nevertheless 
these hopes were frustrated for two long years. 

The English Kadicals, whom I have often been obliged to Uniform 
censure, on the present occasion behaved well, for they agreed ^'.^""^i.Jlej^' 
to support the Whigs, on one condition, that the " uniform 
penny postage" should be adopted. To this — the greatest 
social improvement of modern times — Mr. Sj)ring Kice, the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, was opposed, and there was 
great difficulty in prevailing upon the Cabinet to agree 
to it. As member for the City of Edinburgh 1 headed 



126 



REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VI. 

A.D. 1839. 



23rd Ang. 



Another 
sessional 
review by 
Lord Lyiid- 
hurst. 



a deputation upon the subject to Lord Melbourne, and we 
expressly told him that ''if he would persist in cramping 
commerce and preventing relations who were separated from 
carrying* on an affectionate correspondence, — he charging 
one shilling and two pence for carrying a letter between 
London and Edinburgh, the expense of which might be 
covered by one halfpenny, — we were resolved that his 
Government should not stand." Strange to say, the measure 
was condemned by all Tories, and disrelished by many 
Whigs, and the merit of it is due to the Kadicals. Its 
success has been great, beyond my most sanguine calcula- 
tions, for it has been adopted by foreign nations, and has 
proved a blessing to the human race. 

Lyndhurst was much surprised and mortiiied by observing 
how smoothly we went on, by quietly sacrificing the bills 
which he was resolved to smother when they came within his 
grasp. 

However, before the prorogation, he again emptied upon us 
the vials of his wrath. He began a very elaborate harangue 
by saying, "More meo, I will compare the promises of the 
noble Viscount with his performances." He then went over 
the measures recommended in the Queen's speech, and showed 
how none of them had been carried. Thus he moralised : — 

" What is the conclusion to be drawn from such a state of 
things ? Obviously this : her Majesty's Ministers, at the com- 
mencement of the session, stated in this document deliberately 
the opinion they themselves entertained as to the measures of 
legislation which the interests of the country required ; they 
stated what, in their judgment, the country had a right to expect 
from a vigorous, an able, and an eifective administration. Not 
one of these objects has been accomplished. They have thus 
enabled us to contrast their own opinion of what their duty 
required with their subsequent performance. They have thus 
pronounced their own condemnation. The Minit>try has passed 
judgment on itself — hahemus confitentem reiim. And yet, my 
Lords, these men still continue to hold the reins, without being 
able to direct the course of government. 

* versnto din, quid fcrro rocusout, 

Quid valeaut huuKri ' 

is applicable not to poetry alone ; it extends equally and em- 
phatically to those wlio undertake to conduct the affairs of a 



A.D. 1839. 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUKST. 127 

great empire. To undertake the conduct of sucH affairs without CHAP. 
possessing the vigour, or the capacity, or the Parliamentary con- 
fidence and support necessary to carry such measures as are 
essential to the interests of the country, is considered, and 
justly, by the constitution of these realms as a high misde- 
meanour, as subjecting the parties to impeachment." 

He next commented on the dispute about the ladies of the 
bed-chamber : — 

" Her Majesty's Ministers tendered their resignation. That 
resignation was accepted, and they stated that they only held 
office till their successors were appointed. Then commenced the 
negotiation for forming another administration. While these 
were still in progress, the Ministers, who only held office till 
their successors were appointed, interposed individually and col- 
lectively with their counsel— advised the letter addressed by her 
Majesty to Sir Eobert Peel, and were thus the negotiators with 
their pjolitical opponents. In the result they advised her Majesty 
to break off the negotiation and to restore themselves to the 
position they formerly occupied, — for that was the constitutional 
effect of the whole proceeding. Such a course of conduct never 
before occurred in the history of this country, and I trust in God 
it never will occur again. And what, my Lords, was the first 
act of the restored Government? to draw up their celebrated 
Cabinet minute — a document historically false, argumentatively 
false, legally false — and the unconstitutional character of which 
was only equalled by its folly, its extravagance, and its ab- 
surdity." 

He then finished with the following attack on Lord John 
Eussell : — 

" We all remember the period when the noble Lord, now at 
the head of the Home Department, received an address from 
150,000 persons assembled in the neighbourhood of Birmingham, 
ready at the word of command to march upon London. With 
affected humility, for 

' lowliness is young ambition's ladder,' 

he received the address — ' he was utterly unworthy of the great 
honour conferred upon him ; ' — ' he was deeply grateful for it ; ' — 
and then it was that the noble Lord drew a comparison between the 
conduct of that meeting and the proceedings of yonr Lordships' 
House ; designating the one as the voice of the nation, and the other 
as the wlmj^er of a faction. It is for the country to say whether 



A.D. 1839. 



128 KEIGN OF QUEEN" VICTOKIA/ 

CHAP, it will longer submit to be ruled by sucb men. I have done my 
duty by exposing their misconduct." 

Lord Melbourne. — " The real object of the observations of the 
noble and learned Lord (although not avowed by him) is to 
foster any discontent that may exist in the country, to increase 
any unpopularity which he conceives we may labour under ; and 
the noble and learned Lord has undertaken the more hopeless, 
and, as I apprehend, the impossible task of raising himself in the 
estimation of his fellow citizens. The noble and learned Lord 
may possibly prove that we are unfit to conduct the affairs of the 
country ; he may possibly show that we are unfit for the difficult 
position in which we are placed ; but as to gaining for himself 
anything of credit, as to gaining for himself anything of 
character, as to conciliating any confidence towards himself and 
towards those who would have to administer the government of 
this country if it had the misfortune to be placed in his hands, 
the noble and learned Lord may depend upon it that if his 
powers were 10,000 times what they are, he would be utterly 
unable to effect any such Herculean labour." * 

A.D. 1840. During the whole session of 1840 Lyndhurst was very 
Lyndhurst's inactive. The question of parliamentary privilege between 
IhfgvLr ^^® Souse of Commons and the Court of Queen's Bench was 
question now raging, and it placed him in a disagreeable predica- 
pariiamen- mcnt. For the Sake of annoying the Government, he was 
tarypnvi- strongly inclined to attack the proceedings of the House 
of Commons ; but Peel had honestly and gallantly taken the 
other side, although he thereby displeased a large section of 
his party. Till this matter was adjusted, Lyndhurst saw that 
the Whigs were safe; for the Conservatives, while divided, 
could not form an administration. He therefore agreed to 
Lord John Kussell's proposal that the Gordian knot should 
be cut by legislation, and he supported the bill, declaring 
that, as the right of the two Houses of Parliament to publish 
whatever they think it material that the people should know 
is essential to the due exercise 'of their functions, no action 
shall be maintained for any publication authorised by either 
House. So sincere was he that, by dexterous management, he 
gained over the Duke of AA^ellington, who had been capti- 
vated by the sopliism that "the legislature cannot morally 

* 50 Ilimsard, 49G. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUKST. 129 

justify the publication of a libel." Appealing to the excellent CHAP, 
discrimination of the illustrious warrior on all subjects, he ' 



at last made him understand that a writing which charges a.d. 1840. 
another with misconduct is not necessarily a libel ; otherwise 
the criminal justice of the country could not be administered ; 
and that, to make it a libel, it must be published with a 
malicious motive, and without any laudable purpose being- 
served by the publication. According to this definition of 
libel, neither the printer of the House of Commons nor those 
by whose orders he acts could be charged with the guilt of 
libelling. 

Lyndhurst likewise persuaded Lord Denman to agree to the 
bill, although it amounted to a reversal of his own judgment 
in StocMale v. Hansard, by reciting that the power recognised 
and protected was essentially necessary for the exercise of 
the inquisitorial and legislative functions of Parliament. So 
the bill received the Koyal Assent, the Sheriffs of London 
were discharged out of custody, the publication of parlia- 
mentary papers has since been free, and no question of privi- 
lege has subsequently arisen between the Houses of Par- 
liament and the Courts of Law. 

Lyndhurst was now so strongly convinced that it was his 
policy not to deal in factious assaults upon the Government, 
but to see it quietly sinking in public estimation, that he this 
session allowed an L'ish Municipal Eeform Bill, which he had 
hitherto strenuously opposed, to pass as if it had been a 
private bill for inclosing a common. He was, no doubt, 
partly actuated by the consideration that his return to office 
was certainly near at hand, and that then he would be obliged 
to undergo once more the damaging, if not painful, operation 
of sudden conversion ; for Peel had supported this Irish bill, 
and if not previously passed, it would have been one of the 
first measures of his new administration. 

1 now come to the year when the long-looked-for change a.d. 1841. 
actually did take place, and Lyndhurst was Chancellor for 
the fourth time. 

At the meeting of Parliament the public was amused 2Gth Jan. 
with the farce of Lord Cardigan's trial ; and then began the 
struggle in the House of Commons which terminated in 

VOL. VIII. K 



130 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

^ vf^' ^^^® complete overtlirow of the Whig Government. Lynd- 
hurst anxiously, but silently, looked on. He now felt himself 



A.D. 1841. much more dependent upon Peel than he had been when 
Lyndhurst's there could be no Conservative competitor for the Great Seal. 

position ill -p.- x-i • • ^ 

1841. remberton Leigh, an eminent equity lawyer, who had refused 

the office of Solicitor General, had distinguished himself in 
the House of Commons on the Conservative side, and would 
have made a most excellent Chancellor,* — and Sir William 
FoUett, who had been Solicitor General during "the hun- 
dred days," had displayed great debating powers, possessed 
Peel's entu^e confidence, and was looked forward to as the 
future Chancellor. Lyndhurst, therefore, could no longer 
set up for himself, or venture to do anything to offend Peel, 
who was now recognised as the sole master of the destinies of 
Conservatism. 

Lord Melbourne, although while minister he had declared 
that " to propose a repeal of the Corn Laws would be mad- 
ness," as a last resort consented that a fixed duty — which 
amounted in effect to a repeal of the Corn Laws — should be 
proposed as a measure of his Government. But this alienated 
many W^hig supporters, and gave fresh energy to Tory oppo- 
sition. In consequence, the leading proposals of the ministerial 
budget were rejected by the House of Commons. A hope was 
fostered that Free Trade was more popular in the country^ 

4th June, and a dissolution was determined upon. Peel then moved a 
direct vote of want of confidence, which was carried by a 

22nd June, majority of one. Still many friends of the Government thought 
that an appeal to the people would be successful, and Par- 
liament was dissolved. 

I cannot speak from my own observation of what was now 
going on in England, for I had been sent to Ireland to succeed 
Lord Plunket as Lord Chancellor there; but I was told that 
Lyndhurst watched the elections with very great solicitude, 

rieneivii and that when the returns were decidedly on the Conservative 

Election. gj^jg^ fy.QQ ti.jxde professloiis as yet meeting with little favour, 

* August 15th, 1858. The ' Loudon Gazette ' announces that Pemberton 
Leigh is raised to the Peerage by the title of " Baron Kingsdown, of Kings- 
down in the county of Kcait." lie will greatly strengthen the appellate 
jurisdiction of the House of Lords. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 131 

Peel intimated to liim that lie should wish for his assistance CHAP, 
in the new Government, which he must be commissioned to ' 



form on the meeting of the new Parliament. 

When I came over from Ireland to take my seat in the a.d. 1841. 
House of Lords, I was like a convict led out to execution. 
We full well knew our fate ; but we resolved to put a good 
face upon it, to meet Parliament, and to make the Queen 
deliver a speech in favour of Free Trade. Then came the 19th Aug. 
Amendment in both Houses, — "to assure her Majesty that 
no measures could be properly considered while her Majesty 
had advisers who did not enjoy the confidence of Parliament." 
This was carried by large majorities in both Houses, and of soth Ang. 
course led to a resignation of the Whig ministers. 



K 2 



132 REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAPTER YII. 

LORD CHANCELLOR UNDER SIR ROBERT PEEL. 

September, 1841 — July, 1846. 

CHAP. After a short adjournment during tlie construction of the 

_ new Cabinet, which had been long foreseen and pre-arranged, 

A.D. 1841. Lyndhurst re-entered the House of Lords, preceded by his 

6th Sept. mace-bearer and his purse-bearer with the Great Seal, and 

Lyndhurst Iqq]^ jiig place on the woolsack. He was excessively nervous, 

agam Chan- \ ^ j ' 

ceiior. and, looking bewildered, did not seem at all to recollect the 

forms with which he had so long been familiar. Lord 
Melbourne, in a loud whisper, said to me, " Who would think 
that this is the same impudent dog who bullied us so uncon- 
scionably in his * Keviews of the Session ' ? " But Lyndhurst 
was soon himself again, laughing at everybody and every- 
thing, and especially delighting in a jest against any of his 
colleagues. 

Prorogation, Duriug this brief session the new Chancellor only spoke 
once — which was respecting an amendment (my cou^ d'essai 
in the House of Lords) upon a bill for the creation of two 
additional Vice Chancellors. I proposed to provide *''that 
Irish as well as English barristers should be considered 
qualified for the appointment." He consented to the amend- 
ment ; but slyly insinuated that the only object of the Irish 
ex-Chancellor was to make himself less unpopular in Ireland ; 
that Irish barristers might give him a more cordial reception 
than he had experienced when he first visited that country to 
supersede Lord Plunket. 

Sir Eobert Peel now preserved the most profound silence 

Hi'on-'o7th^ respecting his future measures. The late Goverumcnt having 

'""ent^*'"''^" ^i^^^^ved rarliaiueiit and gone to the country upon their 
Jb'ree-Trude budget, " Protection " was the cry of theii* oppo- 
nents, and this cry had produced the overwhelming majority 



7th Oct, 



Conclusion 
of first ses 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUKST. 133 

by which, the Whis's were crushed. The new Premier was a CHAP. 

. . . VII 
" free-trader " in his heart, and abeady meditated the com- '__ 



mercial reform which he afterwards accomplished. But as a.d. i841. 
yet neither friend nor foe could extort from him any avowal 
of his intentions ; and, having carried a few unimportant bills, 
he hurried on the prorogation. In the evening before the 
day of this ceremony — entering the House of Lords a few 
minutes past five — I found Lyndhurst returning to his private 
room, after an adjournment had been moved and carried, 
there appearing no business to be brought forward. I com- 
plained to him of this sudden adjournment as a trick — saying 
that, " being now in opposition, I was coming down, after his 
example, to take " a review of the session," that I might con- 
trast the promises of the Conservative party with their jper- 
formance since they had been in office. Lyndhurst. — " If you 
had been as wise as we have been, and not brought forward 
measures to be rejected, I might still have been taking 
* a review of the session,' and you might have been enjoying 
the sweets of power." 

I ought to mention that in a very obliging and good- Lyndhurst's 
natured manner he now gave me a small place for my clerk, disposition. 
who had been with me when I was Chancellor in Ireland, and 
who was cast away along with me in the recent wreck. To 
excite me to discontent and desertion, he pretended to say 
that the Whigs were much to blame in leaving me without 
any retired allowance or provision of any sort. But I was 
quite content to remain five years working for the public in 
the judicial business of the House of Lords, and in the 
judicial Committee of the Privy Council. I had voluntarily 
waived my claim to the retired allowance of Irish Chan- 
cellor, and I had no right to complain. 

On the first day of Michaelmas term. Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst's 
Lyndhurst again received the Judges and Queen's Counsel chanceiioi- 
at his levee, and led the grand procession to Westminster «i''P- 
Hall. He was now in his fourth Chancellorship, — the first 
having been under George IV. ; the second under William 
IV., from the accession of that monarch till the formation of 
Lord Grey's Government, in November, 1830; the third 
again under William IV., during the hundred days from 



1846 



34 EEIGN OF QUEEN ViCTOEIA. 

C'HAP. I^ovember, 1834, to April, 1835 ; and, lastly, under Queen 

Victoria, of whose conscience he was the keeper for five 

A.D. 1841- years. No Chancellor had received the Great Seal so often 
from different sovereigns since the Plantagenet reigns. 

In the Court of Chancery he was now exposed to a very 
disagreeable comparison ; for Lord Cottenham, his immediate 
predecessor, although very inferior to him in grasp of intel- 
lect and general acquirements, was a consummate Equity 
Judge ; and had given entire satisfaction to the Bar and the 
suitors in the Court of Chancery. 

Some supposed that Lord Lyndhurst would now show him- 
self (as he might have done) one of the greatest of Chancellors. 
Between five and six years he had enjoyed entire leisure, and 
as during the whole of that period he seemed to be in the 
near prospect of resuming his high office, and eager again to 
possess it, those who were not well acquainted with his habits 
conjectured that he was preparing himself for its duties, with 
which, when he before held it, he had been of necessity imper- 
fectly acquainted. But, in truth, he had been absorbed in 
political intrigue. He hardly ever attended to the judicial 
business of the House of Lords ; with one exception, he never 
sat in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and he 
did not trouble himself with reading the periodical reports of 
the decisions of any of the Equity Judges.* 

No improvement was discoverable. He took no bribes, 
and he never was influenced by any improper motive in 
deciding for one party rather than the other — further than 
taking the course which was likely to give himself least trouble, 
and which least exposed him to unpleasant criticism. His 
excellent good sense and admirable tact kept him out of 
scrapes. Avoiding danger, he was careless about glory ; and 

* The instance in wliich he did sit in the Privy Council was an appeal 
from the Arches on the will of Jemmy Wood, the banker at Gloucester, a case 
involving property to an immense amount, and attended with very great diffi- 
culty. I was counsel for the appellant, and 1 tliought Lyndhurst a Daniel ; for 
the Court, by his advice, decided for my client. But such was Lyudhurst's 
disinclination to judicial work, that I could not prevail uj^on him to attend 
the liearing of the ap])cal in the House of Lords on which the disruption of 
the Church of Scotland depended; and tliis wns disposed of exclusively 
by two peers, Lord Brongham and Lord Cottenham. His presence might have 
Huvcd a great national calamity. 



LIFE OF LOED LTNDHUEST. 135 

not by any means over-anxious or scrupulous about the busi- CHAP. 
ness of his Court being disposed of satisfactorily. He sat ' 



sions. 



in the Court of Chancery as little as he possibly could, and a.d. i84i- 
his great object was to shirk the decision of perplexed and ■^^^^' 
difficult questions. Upon appeals from the Master of the 
Kolls and the Vice Chancellors, he almost always affirmed ; 
by which he had the treble advantage of lessening the number 
of appeals, of having the good word of the Judge appealed ^ 
from, and of shunning the necessity for giving reasoned 
judgments.* 

It is quite marvellous to find how few and how unim- Paucity of 
porta nt are Lyndhurst's recorded decisions in kis last quin- ^^^ ^^^^' 
quennium. They are all comprised in a portion of the first 
volume of Phillips's Eeports, t hardly exceeding in number, 
and certainly not in weight, the decisions of the Court of 
Queen's Bench in a single term. 

After looking over all the Chancery cases Tempore Lijnd- 
hurst, the following is the only one I can discover likely 
to be interestiug to the general reader, — " Viscount Canterbury 
V. the Attorney-General," which was commenced when I had 
the honour to be first law officer of the Crown. 

On the 1 6th of October, 1834, the two Houses of Parlia- Speaker 
ment were burnt down, with the Speaker's house and adjoining 
buildings, constituting the ancient Eoyal Palace of West- 
minster.J The conflagration was occasioned by the negligence 
of workmen in the employment of the Commissioners of 
Woods and Forests, who had made a bonfire of an immense 

* Lord Lyndhurst's propensity to affirm was the more striking from Lord 
Cottenham's propensity to reverse. This distinguished Judge did not even 
acknowledge that there is a presumption in favour of the decree appealed 
against, and that it ought to stand till the appellate Judge is convinced tliat it 
was wrong. He treated every appeal as an original hearing, being governed 
by the smallest inclination in his own mind in favour of the appellant's side. 
This was his avowed principle ; but tlie wags in the Court of Chancery went so 
far as to say that he always presumed the decree to be wrong till the contrary 
was clearly proved, the odds being two to one against Vice Chancellor Shad- 
well, and three to one against Vice Chancellor Knight Bruce. 

t From p. 50 to p. 778. 

X The apartments called "The Speaker's House" were first appropriated 
to the use of the Speaker in the year 1790, by warrant of George IH., 
and George IV. at the time of his coronation occupied them for two days 
as part of the palace. The crypt of the ancient chapel of St. Stephen, till 
the fire, had been used as the Speaker's dining-room. 



Sutton's 
case. 



1846. 



136 KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOKIA. 

^^-^^' quantity of "wooden tallies," — implements by which the 

^__ accounts of the Exchequer had been kept, as in the reign 

A.D. 1841- of Edward the Confessor. The Eight Hon. Charles Manners 
Sutton (afterwards created Yiscount Canterbury) was then 
Speaker of the House of Commons, and this fire destroyed 
his furniture and plate of the value of 7000Z., and damaged 
other property of his to the amount of 3000/. He took no 
steps with a view to obtain compensation during the reign 
of William IV. ; but in the year 1840 he presented a Petition 
of Eight addressed to her Majesty Queen Victoria, setting 
forth the above facts, and alleging that as this loss had arisen 
in a royal palace, from the negligence of the servants of the 
Crown, the petitioner, as of right, was entitled to compensa- 
tion from the Crown. 

The Queen gave the answer ^^ Let Bight he done" and 
referred the case to her Lord Chancellor. The allegations 
of fact in the petition being substantially true, but affording 
no foundation in point of law for the claim, the Attorney 
General confessed the truth of them, and " demurred.'' 
After I was out of office, the case was very learnedly argued 
before Lord Lyndhurst — on one side by my successor, Sir 
Frederick Pollock, now Chief Baron of the Exchequer ; and 
on the other side by Serjeant Wilde, afterwards Lord Chan- 
cellor Truro. 

Lord Lyndhurst, having taken time to consider, delivered 
a very learned and excellent written judgment. He began 
with considering the true construction of the statute of Anne 
respecting liability for the consequences of accidental fire, 
as between subject and subject. He then proceeded to con- 
sider how far the claim could be supported against the 
Crown : — 

"It is admitted that for the personal negligence of the 
Sovereign neither this nor any other proceeding can be main- 
tained. Upon what ground, then, can it be supported for the acts 
of the agent or scivaiit? If the master or employer is an- 
swerable upon the principle qui facit per aliiim facit per se, this 
would not apply to the Sovereign, who cannot be required to 
answer for his own personal acts. If it be said that the master 
is answerable fur the negligence of his servant, because it may 



LIFE OF LOED LTNDHUEST. 137 

be considered to have arisen from his own misconduct or neo;li- CHAP, 
gence in selecting or retaining a careless servant, that principle 
cannot apply to the Sovereign, to whom negligence or misconduct 
cannot be imputed, and for which, if they occur in fact, the law 1846. 
affords no remedy. If the principle now contended for were 
correct, the negligence of the seamen in the service of the Crown 
would raise a liability in the Crown to make good the damage, 
and which might be enforced by a Petition of Eight. Though 
cases of this nature have happened at different periods, it seems 
never to have occurred to the parties injured or to their advisers 
that redress could be obtained by means of a Petition of Eight. 

" Another objection urged is, that the petitioner's cause of 
action arose in the time of the late King ; and it is clear that had 
this been a case between subject and subject, an action could not 
have been supported — actio personalis moritur cum persona. We are 
told that a different rule prevails when the Sovereigu is a party; 
but some authority should be adduced for such a distinction. It 
is true, indeed, that the King never dies ; the demise is imme- 
diately followed by the succession; there is no interval. The . 
Sovereign always exists ; the person only is changed. But if 
there is a change of person, why is the personal responsibility 
arising from the negligence of servants (if, indeed, such respon- 
sibility exists) to be charged upon the successor, ceasing as it 
does altogether in the case of a private individual ? In the case 
of a subject, the liability does not continue in respect of the 
estate ; it devolves neither upon the heir nor the personal repre- - 

sentative ; it is extinct." 

Having then alluded to the objections arising from the 
duty cast by Acts of Parliament upon the Commissioners of 
Woods and Forests respecting the Palace at Westminster, he 
asked : — 

" Assuming that the fire had been caused by the personal 
negligence of the Commissioners, would the Crown have been 
liable to make good the loss ? They are, indeed, styled ' Ser- 
vants of the Crown ; ' but they are, in truth, public officers 
appointed to perform certain duties assigned to them by the 
legislature, and for any negligence in the discharge of such 
duties and any injury thereby sustained, they alone, I conceive, 
are liable. These officers are appointed by the Crown, and are 
removable at the pleasure of the Crown ; but that circumstance 
alone will not create any such liability. The Keeper of the 
Great Seal, and other persons holding high situations in the 



138 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP. State, have authority to appoint to many offices, and also to 
■ remove the persons so appointed at pleasure. But they are not 



AD 1841 ^^ ^^^^ account subject to make compensation for injury occa- 
1846. sioned by the neglect or misconduct of the persons so appointed. 

The mere selection of the officers does not create a liability. 
But if the Crown would not be responsible for the act done, had 
it been done by the superiors, it follows that the Crown cannot 
be held liable for the negligence of their subordinate agents, 
whom they appoint and remove, and with the selection and con- 
trol of whom the Crown has no concern." 

His Lordship then referred to the cases of Rohert de Clifton, 
in the reign of Edward II., and of Gervais de Clifton in the 
reign of Edward III., in which claims had been made on the 
Crown for damage done by the King's servants to the lands 
of the petitioners in improving the defences of Nottingham 
Castle ; and showing that they did not apply to the case now 
to be determined, he said, — 

" I am compelled to come to the conclusion that this pro- 
ceeding cannot be maintained, and that the demurrer of the 
Attorney General must be allowed. It is a great satisfaction to 
me to know that in this singular and novel case, involving much 
that is obscure and almost obsolete, if I am wrong in the opinion 
I have given, it is open to revision by writ of error, should the 
petitioner be advised that there are sufficient grounds to question 
^ its correctness." 

No writ of error was brought, and the wonder is that men 
of eminence at the bar should have ever advised a proceeding 
so preposterous and hopeless. 
Judicial For the judicial business of the House of Lords there 

theHouse "^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ largest staff of law lords ever known, — Lord 
of Lords. Lyndhurst, Chancellor of Great Britain, Lord Brougliam, 
ex-Chancellor of Great Britain, Lord Cottenham, ex-Chan- 
cellor of Great Britain, and Lord Campbell, ex-Chancellor of 
Ireland. There was a considerable arrear of cases which stood 
for hearing, and we resolved to sit four days every week — the 
Chancellor being present two days, and the other law lords pre- 
siding by turns in his absence. Tlio business certainly was done 
in a very satisfactory manner. Laying aside all party and 
personal feelings, we laboured conscientiously to arrive at the 
right conclusion. Lyndhurst himself showed wonderful quick- 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 139 

ness of apprehension and power of ratiocination, again proving CHAP, 
that, doing justice to himself, he might have left behind him '__ 



a splendid reputation as a great magistrate. But although, a.d. I84i- 
when necessary, he could make himself master of the most -^^^^^ 
abstruse points in the law of Scotland, which he had never sys- 
tematically studied, he was generally better pleased to lean 
upon others, and to be guided by faith rather than by reason. 
The eccentric Brougham occasionally discomposed our pro- 
ceedings by coming in when the case was half heard, and 
putting questions without having listened to the argument; but 
he was docile and manageable, and, when necessary, he could 
prepare himself and give judgment very creditably. Cotten- 
ham was pretty regular in his attendance, and displayed great 
aptitude for judicial business ; but we could not always 
induce him to come to town from his villa, near Wimbledon. 
I was in my apprenticeship as a judge ; and I may at least 
give myself the character of being attentive and industrious. 
In the absence of the Chancellor, the law lord who presided 
spoke first. Lyndhurst never betrayed the smallest degree 
of jealousy or envy. In truth, being indifferent about judicial 
fame himself, it gave him no uneasiness to see it acquired 
by others. 

In the case of Johnstone v. Beattie* a great difficulty Johnstone 
arose from our being equally divided, and a fifth law lord, e'tabhshioa; 
who did not usually attend the hearing in appeals, was called the nanow- 
in to make a majority. A domiciled Scotchman, of large of English 
landed estate in Scotland, without any property in England, la^^y^is- 
married to a Scotchwoman, had by her an only child, a 
daughter, for whom, before his death, he duly appointed 
tutors and curators, domiciled in Scotland, who were con- 
firmed by the Supreme Court in Scotland, and who by the 
law of Scotland were entitled to the guardianship of her per- 
son and the management of her property. Some years after 
the death of both parents, she, while still an infant, happened 
casually to be in England ; whereupon certain parties, wish- 
ing to obtain possession of her and to supersede the Scotch 
tutors and curators, who had acted unexceptionably in the 
guardianship of her person and her property since her father's ^ 

* 10 Clark and Finclly, 42. 



140 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

^vn^' ^^^^^} fil®^ ^ ^i^l ^^ Chancery alleging falsely (as was ad- 

mitted) that she had property in England, and praying that 

A.D. 1841- one of them might be appointed her guardian, and that the 
Scotch tutors and curators should account to the English 
guardian for all the rents and profits of the Scotch estates. 
The Vice Chancellor, the facts being laid before him, made 
an order to that effect, and this was affirmed by Lord Chan- 
cellor Lyndhurst. Upon an appeal to the House of Lords, 
the order appeared to Lord Brougham and to myself not only 
absurd, but contrary to the law of England; while Lords 
Lyndhurst and Cottenham considered the proceeding as a 
matter quite of course and highly laudable, although they 
allowed that the person and property of the infant would 
henceforth be under the control of the English guardian, and 
that during her minority she would not without his consent 
be allowed to marry or to return to her native country. 
Lord Langdale, Master of the EoUs, being called in, after an 
argument in his hearing, declared himself of the same opinion. 
This was a most lamentable, but by no means singular, 
instance of the narrow-mindedness of Ens^lish lawyers. Here 
three very able men, competent to form a sound conclusion 
upon any subject to which logical reasoning and common 
sense are to be applied, were satisfied with this order, because 
it is laid down in the books of practice that as soon as a bill 
is filed to make an infant a ward of the Court, the infant is a 
ward of the Court, and a guardian ought to be appointed — so 
that any foreign cliild, male or female, brought to England 
for a few weeks or days with a view to health, or education, 
or amusement, may be made a ward of Chancery and impri- 
soned in England till twenty-one. I did not much wonder 
at Cottenham and Langdale countenancing such nonsense, as 
they had never been freed from the trammels of the Equity 
draughtsman's office in wliicli they learned to draw Bills and 
Answers ; but when I found that the masculine and enlightened 
mind of Lyndhurst did not revolt at it, I was filled with 
astonishment as well as dismay. The truth, I believe, was, 
that he had committed himself by " affirming " as Chancellor, 
, more suo, witliout much considering whether the order 

appealed from was right or wrong. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUKST. 141 

Soon after this, all the law lords were definitively divided CHAP, 
equally upon a much more important question — indeed I may ' 



the necessity 
for a mass 



say, the most important question which ever came before the a.d. 184i 
House of Lords as the Supreme Court of Appeal. Unfortu- ^^^^' 
nately such a question was decided on the technical maxim case irto 
by which the House of Lords alone, of all the tribunals I ever 
read of, is governed, — semj^er ^rsesumitur contra negantem, priest to 
making the result often depend upon the language in which ^irriate 
the question is framed. 

In Ireland a man who was a member of the established 
Church was married to a woman who was a Presbyterian by 
a regularly officiating Presbyterian clergyman, both parties 
intending to contract a valid marriage, and believing that 
they had done so. They lived together some years as man 
and wife and had several children, who were acknowledged 
as legitimate. The husband then married another wife, the 
former wife being still alive, and was indicted for bigamy. 
His defence was that the first marriage was a nullity, and 
therefore that he committed no crime when he married the 
second wife. It was admitted that there was no statute law 
in Ireland applicable to a marriage between a member of the 
established Church and a Dissenter, and that the case was to 
be governed by the common law of England. Thus arose 
the fearful question — whether by the common law of England 
there might be a valid marriage by the consent of the parties 
without the presence of a priest episcopally ordained. It 
was admitted that a marriage celebrated by a Eoman Catholic 
priest, although both parties were Protestants, would be valid ; 
but a Presbyterian pastor, although he might have officiated 
in a parish for fifty years, and might have acted as Moderator 
of the General Assembly of the established Church of Scot- 
land, was for this purpose a mere layman, because he had 
not been admitted to holy orders by a Bishop. Within the 
realm of England marriage is entirely regulated by Lord 
Hardwicke's Act, passed in 1753, and by subsequent statutes, 
but the validity of marriages contracted by millions of British 
subjects in Ireland and in other dominions under the British 
Crown and upon the high seas depended upon the solution of 
this question. For half a century, ever since the decision 



142 EMGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

^^^^- of Lord Stowell in the famous case of Dalrymj)le v. Dal- 
ri/mple, it had been considered established doctrine that the 



A.D. 1841- presence of an episcopally ordained priest was unnecessary, 
^ ' as the necessity for his presence in Koman Catholic countries 

was introduced only by the Council of Trent, and marriage, 
although a sacrament, like baptism, may effectually take 
place without a priest. This doctrine had been expressly 
approved of by Lord Kenyon, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Ten- 
terden, and all our most eminent Judges; and upon the 
strength of it there had been repeated convictions for bigamy. 
But in an obscure book, lately published professing to state '"'the 
Law of Husband and Wife," the doctrine was controverted ; 
and upon such authority proceeded this prisoner's defence. 
The Irish Judges were equally divided ; and, strange to say, 
the English Judges, being consulted by the House of Lords, 
declared themselves unanimously of opinion that the first 
marriage was null, although they admitted that this was con- 
trary to the Canon law which prevailed in every other 
country of Europe before the Council of Trent. They relied 
chiefly on a supposed Anglo-Saxon law, that, to make nup- 
tials prosperous, " there must be present a mass priest'' Yet 
they admitted that a marriage celebrated by one in deacon's 
orders always was and is valid, notwithstanding that a deacon 
is not a mass priest. Six law lords had been present at the 
argument — the Lord Chancellor, Lord Abinger, Lord Cotten- 
ham, Lord Brougham, Lord Denman, and Lord Campbell. Of 
these, the first three voted for reversing the conviction, and 
the last three for affirming it. Lord Lyndhurst's judgment 
was very learned and able. He seemed most puzzled to give 
a definition of a priest to be recognised as having power 
IffwfuUy to celebrate marriage. I had asked, " Is a priest of 
the Greek Church sufficient ? or of the Cliurcli of. Abyssinia, 
or of the Lutheran Church, which in some countries main- 
tains episcopacy and in others looks only to a consistory by 
whom orders are conferred ? Mr. John ]\[orrison, who never 
had any ordination except by the imposition of hands of some 
Presbyterian ministers in Scotland, was licensed by Arch- 
bishop (niudal to })reach and administer the sacraments all 
over the province of Canterbury ; would a marriage by him 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUKST. 143 

have been held Talid or void ? " Thus answered Lord Lynd- CHAP, 
hurst : — 



" Holy orders, according to the law of England, are orders a.d. I84i- 
conferred by episcopal ordination. This was the law of the 
Catholic Church in this country, and the same law continued 
after the Eeformation as the law of the Episcopal Eeformed 
Church. A marriage celebrated by a Eoman Catholic priest, as 
in Fielding's case, and other instances, has been considered valid. 
A priest of the Romish church is a priest by episcopal ordina- 
tion, and his orders are accounted holy orders by our Church." 

This is all the answer I could get to my queries. 

If the motion had been that the judgment be affirmed, we, 
the contents, should have succeeded in establishing the old 
common law as laid down by Lord Stowell, the jpresum^tion 
being against the negative ; but the Chancellor, according to 
a standing order of the House, put the question that " the 
judgment be reversed," and we being obliged to say " Not 
Content^' the presumption was against us, and a judgment 
passed by which hundreds of marriages, the validity of which 
had not been doubted, were nullified, and thousands of children 
were bastardized. 

Legislation has since interfered to mitigate the evil by rati- 
fying past marriages lona fide contracted without a mass priest, 
and providing that in Ireland and in the colonies marriage may 
in future be constituted by prescribed formalities without a 
mass priest; but such a place as Pitcairn's Island is left 
altogether unprovided for, and there the descendants of the 
crew of the ' Bounty,' who for fifty years in their domestic 
unions followed the purest precepts of the Gospel, are still 
to be considered as living in concubinage, with offspring in- 
capable of inheriting their property.* 

The most important political case which came before the r>;^niel 
House of Lords judicially while Lord Lyndhurst presided case. 
there, was OConnell v. the Queen — a writ of error by the 
great Irish agitator upon a conviction arising out of his 
'* monster meetings " held in various parts of Ireland for a 
repeal of the Union. The eyes of all Europe were turned 
upon this proceeding. Foreign nations had for some years 

* Eegina v. Millis, 10 Clark and Fmelly, 534. 



1846. 



144 EEIGK OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, thought it very probable that O'Connell, conducting a suc- 
' cessful revolution, would become president of the Hibernian 
A.D. 1841- republic; and their opinion was that, although he had been 
convicted and imprisoned, if liberated by a reversal of his sen- 
tence, he might still accomplish his great design. There had 
been various debates in the House of Lords, sitting politically, 
in which the Government had been loudly blamed for so 
long tolerating the " monster meetings," and then including 
in one indictment against the leader and his associates all 
their supposed offences committed for several years by acts, 
writings, and speeches. On the other hand, we of the oppo- 
sition, who brought forward these accusations, were charged 
with factiously abetting treason and rebellion. To the 
honour of the Peerage the hearing of the appeal was con- 
ducted with the utmost calmness and seeming conscientious- 
ness and impartiality. The demeanour of the Chancellor, 
who had hitherto been the most violent against O'Connell, 
was now that of a dignified magistrate whose only object was 
to arrive at a right conclusion, and to do justice between the 
Crown and the subject. 

The Judges who were summoned to assist were divided in 
opinion, two thinking that the judgment was wrong and all 
the rest that it was right. A great number of Peers had 
attended the hearing at different times, but only ^ve were 
present during the whole of the argument, — the Chancellor, 
Lord Brougham, Lord Denman, Lord Cottenham, and Lord 
Campbell. By all of them elaborate opinions were delivered, 
— the first two being for affirming, and the last three for 
reversing. According to the authorised report of the House 
of Lords,* " The Lord Chancellor, from his place on the wool- 
sack, then put the question — ' Is it your Lordships' pleasure 
that the judgment of the Court below be reversed? As 
many of your Lordships as are of that opinion will say 
Content.' Lords Denman, Cottenham, and Campbell an- 
swered Content. The Lord Chancellor — ' As many as are of 
an opposite opinion will say Not Content' Lord Brougham 
and other Peers said Not Content.'' Lord WIiarncliiTe, the 
President of the Council, according to usage on such occasions 

* 11 Clark ami Fiuelly, 421. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 145 

when discussions arise after the question is put, remaining CHAP, 
seated with his hat on, said : — ' 



"My Lords, — Jn this state of things I cannot help suggesting 1846. 
that Your Lordships should not divide the House upon a question 
of this kind, when the opinions of the law Lords have been 
already given upon it, and the majority is in favour of reversing 
the judgment. In point of fact, my Lords, they constitute the 
Court of Appeal ; and if noble Lords unlearned in the law should 
interfere to decide such questions by their votes, instead of 
leaving them to the decision of the law Lords, I very much fear 
that the authority of this House as a Court of Justice would be 
greatly impaired." 

Lord Brougham. — " Deepl}^ lamenting the decision about to be 
pronounced — a decision which will go forth w^ithout authoritj^, 
and come back wdthout respect, — nevertheless, I highly approve 
of the view of this matter taken by my noble friend, and im- 
plore your Lordships who have not heard all the arguments — 
who have not made yourselves perfectly acquainted with the 
subject, and whose habits do not lead you to take part usually in 
the discussion of such questions, — not to take any part in this 
decision. In justice to myself I ought to say that I do think it 
is very wrong to go against the opinion of a majority of the 
Judges in this case, although I did w^ish to go against the 
opinion of all the Judges in the Irish Marriage case, because 
that opinion differed from the eminent and venerable authority 
of Lord Stowell, and other learned persons well capable of 
forming a correct opinion upon the subject." 

Lord Campbell. — "I concurred with my noble and learned 
friend in opposing the unanimous opinion of all the Judges in 
the case of the Irish Marriages, because I thought it contrar}^ to 
the law of England ; and I now oppose the opinion of a majority 
of the Judges because I believe it to be contrary to the law 
of England. With reference to what has been said of the dis- 
tinction between Law Lords and Lay Lords, and leaving the 
decision of this case with the Law Lords, it is unnecessary for 
me to say more than that the distinction is unknown to the 
Constitution, and that there is no order of Laio Lords in the 
formation of your Lordships' House. But there is a distinction 
in reason and the fitness of things between members of a court 
who have heard a, case argued and members of that court who 
have not heard it argued; and those only who have heard the 
argument should take part in the decision. I believe that none 

VOL. VIII. L 



146 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

^^^■^- bnt those wlio are called Laio Lords have constantly attended 

'__ while this case has been debated at yonr Lordships' bar," 

vD 1841- Lord Chancellor. — "I think those noble Lords who liave not 
1846. heard the arguments will decline voting if I put the question 

again." 

All the lay Lords then withdrew, when, the question being 
again put, *' That the judgment be reversed," it was carried 
in the affirmative.* 

The Government might easily have had the judgment 
affirmed, but acted wisely in deputing the President of the 
Council to advise the lay Peers to withdraw ; for an affirm- 
ance so obtained would have made O'Connell more than ever 
the idol of his countrymen, and it is an undoubted fact that 
from the time of his liberation his influence steadily de- 
clined. 
Lyndhurst The general reader will probably think he has had enough 
ofPeeiTia^t °^ ^^^^ ^^^ would bc glad to return to topics of a more 
cabinet. popular character. Lord Lyndhurst had now little weight 
in the Cabinet ; Peel placed no confidence in him, and would 
have been well pleased to have got rid of him altogether. 
Sugden was still more disliked, and he was promptly 
sent to succeed me as Chancellor in Ireland. But tlie 
Premier would have been highly delighted to give the Great 
Seal of Great Britain to Pemberton Leigh or Sir William 
Follett, both of whom were admirably well qualified for all. its 
duties. Lyndhurst, however, had such a position in the House 
of Lords, and stood so well in the estimation of the Duke of 
Wellington, that his re-appointment to his former office was 
indispensable to the formation of the new Government. Peel 
was at no pains to conceal how little he cared for his 
Chancellor. To illustrate this, an anecdote was afterwards 
related for which I can vouch no authority, but which was 
generally circulated and (altliougli very improbable) gene- 
rally believed. Peel having, early in 1842, resolved in his 
own mind how he meant to modify the tariff, explained his 
plan to the Cabinet, without as yet hinting at the repeal of 
the Corn Laws. His colleagues all nodded assent, except the 
Chancellor, wlio begun a speech of objections. Peel there- 

♦ 11 Clnik and Finollv. 



> LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHURST. 147 

upon took up a newspaper and read it till, after a long ^'^4^- 
interval, silence was restored. He then threw it down, ex- [ 



claimed, "Well, I suppose we are all agreed!" and broke a.d. 1812. 
up the meeting. Even upon questions of law reform (as we 
shall see) the Chancellor was not always consulted, and Sir 
James Graham, who filled the office of Home Secretary, 
acted as Chief Minister of Justice. 

Still, in the House of Lords the Chancellor played osten- Lyudhuvst 
sibly a very prominent part. The Duke of Wellington, iJ^aterof the 
without any civil office, was the leader on the Government House of 
side ; but he was then in a very feeble state of health, from 
which he afterwards rallied. At this time, as often as he 
rose to speak, both his supporters and his opponents were 
afraid that he would break down ; and his colleagues who sat 
on the ministerial bench along with him were exceedingly 
incompetent to resist an onslaught, if any had been made 
upon them. The prostrate Whigs pretended that their oppo- 
nents practised the device of a besieged city, according to 
which the aged and infirm are placed on the walls, that the 
enemy, out of compassion, may cease to fire. Nevertheless, 
there were occasional little debates upon the improper ap- 
pointment or the improper dismissal of magistrates, and 
similar subordinate matters, in which the Chancellor stood 
forth as the defender of the Government with much vigour 
and effect. 

The law lords gave him very little trouble. Cottenham 
seldom attended the meetings of the House in the evening 
for legislation or political discussion, and, when he did come, 
he took hardly any part in the proceedings. Langdale could 
not be prevailed upon to assist even in discussions respecting 
the reformation of the Court of Chancery. Brougham was 
always present, and sat on the Opposition side of the House ; 
but, in truth, from a rankling desire to be revenged upon the 
Whigs, who had discarded him, he had become the slave of 
the Tories. Lyndhurst managed him with admirable dex- 
terity by persuading him that he himself meant ere long to 
resign the Great Seal, and that Peel would then eagerly offer 
it to the man whose extraordinary talents, eloquence, and • 
reputation would so powerfully strengthen the Government. 

l2 



148 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. . 

CHAP. I alone ventured on anything approaching to opposition, and 
I appeared in the House of Lords not under very auspicious 



A.D. 1842. circumstances, having held the Great Seal of Ireland for a few 
weeks only when I w^as forced to abandon power and place. 
Lyndhurst, notwithstanding our long and familiar intimacy, 
was disposed to treat me very cavalierly, and, with Brougham's 
help, to crush me as speedily as possible. 

Early in the Session of 1842 I laid on the table three 
bills, the object of which was to make a permanent Chief 
Judge in the Court of Chancery; to abolish the Judicial 
Committee of the Privy Council ; and to constitute the House 
of Lords, presided over by the Chancellor, the only Court in 
the last resort for appeals from England, Scotland, L-eland, 
or the colonies, civil, criminal, and ecclesiastical. Upon this 
occasion, in a very modest and deferential manner, I ex- 
plained the necessity for altering the constitution of the 
Court of Chancer}^, pointed out the inconvenience of having 
two co-equal Courts of Appeal — the House of Lords and the 
Privy Council — before which the same question of law might 
arise and be decided differently, and tried to show that the 
House of Lords, with the assistance of the Common Law, 
Equity, and Ecclesiastical Judges, might efficiently and satis- 
factorily dispose of all the appeals in the empire ; sitting, if 
necessary, for judicial business when the other House of Par- 
liament might be adjourned. 

Lyndhurst, with a very sneering countenance and mock- 
heroic tone, said — 

" He was not surprised that his noble and learned friend, the 
ex-Chancellor of Ireland, should have come down to the House with 
this proposition ; he had led a life of continuous activity, and 
having now little occupation he appeared desirous to devote 
himself to the introduction of alterations in the laws of his 
country — 

' Quod petiit, spemit ; repetit quod nuper omisit ; 
-ZEstuat, et vitsB disconvenit ordine toto : 
Diruit, scdificat, mutat quadrata lotimdis.' 

In my reply I alluded to the remark of my noble and 

learned friend on the woolsack that I had prepared and 

brought in these Bills merely ;pour ecarter Tennui, and 
said — 



A.D. 1842. 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUKST. 149 

" I assure him that, wlien out of office, I will not follow the CHAP, 
example of those who, bj reckless factiousness, show only their 
eagerness to return to it. I beg leave to remind your Lordships 
that law reform, scoffed at by my noble and learned friend, is not 
new to me; and that in my busiest time I sent up from the 
House of Commons various important bills for the improvement 
of the law, which met with the approbation of your Lordships and 
are now to be found on the Statute Book." 

So wanton was Lyiidhurst's attack that even Lord Brougham 
thought himself bound to come to the rescue, and to bear 
testimony to my services in reforming the law when at the 
head of the Keal Property Commission and a member of the 
House of Commons.* 

The Bills coming on for a second reading, Lord Lyndhurst 
opposed them most violently, and was particularly severe 
upon the proposal that the House of Lords might sit as a 
Court of Appeal for judicial business exclusively, at times 
when the House of Commons was not sitting : — 

" My noble and learned friend," said he, " expects to be able 
so to tie up your Lordships' tongues as that they shall not be 
able to speak except upon judicial matters. How is this to 
be accomplished? How force men to be silent? If prevented 
one way, another will be discovered. Your Lordships have seen 
a little of the recklessness of my noble and learned friend since 
he came into this House. During the hearing of an appeal, he 
would like to get up and taunt a political opponent ; he would 
be met by his own clause imposing silence ; but I am afraid the 
result would prove that nature or habit would prevail — thus 
verifying the line — 

' Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.' " 

Lord Campbell. — " My noble and learned friend is afraid that, 
notwithstanding any law to the contrary, there might be political 
discussions during these judicial sittings in the autumn. What is 
my noble and learned friend's own practice at present, during our 
morning sittings fur judicial business? As yet he has not, while 
hearing a Scotch appeal, broke out with a speech in favour of the 
Corn Laws or against Whiggish opinions, which now-a-days he is 
ever socager to assail, although there be no positive law to forbid 
such unseasonable haranguing. He may surely give others 



♦ Hansard, vol. Ix., 1218, 12GG. 



A.D. 1842. 



150 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP, credit for being able to curb their desire to mix politics with 
judicial proceedings, in obedience to an Act of Parliament. For 
the present, my Lords, the measure is defeated ; but I do not 
despair of seeing it carried before long with the powerful sap- 
port of my noble and learned friend. Although strong in the 
profession of his opinions at the moment, he cannot be accused 
of obstinacy. I could mention more than one important measure 
which, having warmly opposed, he has supported with equal 
warmth — making the best speech that has been made either 
against it or for it. Having to-night made a very able speech, 
denouncing these Bills as mischievous, I may yet hear him 
make a still better, recommending them as safe and beneficial ; 
and, my Lords, when passed under his auspices, I am convinced 
that they will be found to have introduced a substantial improve- 
ment into the administration of justice in this country ; and that 
his apparent inconsistency will only give him a new claim to the 
admiration of posterity." * 

A.D. 1843. In the Session of 1843 Lyndhurst behaved very laudably 
Lvndhuist's in assisting to amend the law of libel. He at once agreed 
amending to the Select Committee to consider the subject, and he 

the law of 
libol. 



very handsomely supported the bill framed upon the report 
of the Committee for allowing (among various other im- 
provements) that, upon a criminal prosecution for libel, 
the truth of the charge in the alleged libel may be pleaded 
and given in evidence, and shall amount to a defence, if the 
jury think that the alleged libel was published for the public 
good. I knew that Peel very much approved of the bill, 
and wished it to be carried ; for, from the beginning of his 
career, he was inclined to liberal opinions as far as his situa- 
tion would permit. He had now openly hoisted the liberal 
flag, and, both with respect to trade and the internal rule of 
the country, he wished it to be understood that his govern- 
ment was quite as liberal as Lord Melbourne's. But I liave 
no reason to suppose that Lyndhurst's support of this mea- 
sure did not spontaneously flow from his own conviction ; 
for, when without an interested motive to the contrary, ho 
was himself always for progress. 

A great Chancellor ought to liave directed the resolutions 
of the Government on the subject wliich occupied public 

♦ Haubanl. Ixxii., 17"). 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 151 

attention .during a considerable part of this session, — tlie con- CHAP, 
troversy bet^Yeen the civil and the ecclesiastical Courts of __^^___ 
Scotland ; but, unfortunately, Lyndhurst listlessly left the a.d. 1843. 
subject to Lord Aberdeen, who, by his temporising and vacil- Disruption 
lation, brought about the "Disruption." He led both parties chmch of 
by turns to believe that the Government sided y/ith them ; -cotiand. 
and by hopes of concessions held out to them, the ultra- 
montane Presbyterian clergy were induced to commit them- 
selves by declarations respecting the inalienable rights of the 
Church, exceeding in extravagance anything ever claimed by 
the most violent of the Popes of Kome. He then suddenly 
drew back, and proclaimed himself the champion of spiritual 
subordination to the civil magistrate. The disruption which 
followed might certainly have been prevented by a display 
of firmness and decision when the struggle began. The 
whimsical conclusion of the whole was that, after the mis- 
chief was irremediable, Lord Aberdeen granted to the clergy 
who remained in the Church powers wjiich, if granted in 
time, would have amply satisfied those who went forth to 
found the hostile Free Kirk. 

Lyndhurst having, against his early opinions, conformed a.d. 1844. 
to the ultra-Tory policy of Lord Castlereagh, and, by sup- 
porting the Six Acts, done his best to establish tyranny in 
England, now very zealously supported the policy of Sir 
Kobert Peel, which had become as liberal as any friend to 
monarchical and aristocratical, combined with democratical, 
institutions could desire. The Premier did not, according to 
the prophecy of Lord Eldon, put himself at the head of the 
mob and try to overturn the Church ; but he wished that he 
might govern by enlightened public opinion, and that civil 
rights should be equally enjoyed by all classes in the com- 
munity without regard to their religious belief. According 
to his instructions, the Chancellor, in the Session of 1844, 
introduced three very excellent bills, which the Whigs could 
not have ventured upon, and which caused great alarm to 
the Bishops, even when coming from a quarter once supposed 
so orthodox and so well affected to the Church. Tlie first 
was to allow all persons in Ireland to be united in marria^*e 
by their own pastors, so that the validity of the marriage. 



Lyndhurst 
a Liberal. 



152 RETGN OF QUEEI!^^ VICTOEIA. 

^^■P- when duly registered, could not afterwards be questioned; 
' the second was to do away with Prsemunire^ and other 
A. D. 1844. terrible penalties imposed upon Koman Catholics; and the 
third was to entitle Unitarian congregations in Ireland and 
England to enjoy the endowments attached to their places 
of religious worship after a prescription of twentj^-five years, 
although those endowments had been granted by Trinitarian 
or Calvinistic founders with a view to the support and propa- 
gation of their own sect. Lyndhurst, taldng care to announce 
that all the three bills emanated from the Government, ex- 
plained and defended them with admirable perspicuity and 
force. The Marriage Bill passed pretty smoothly, as it did 
little more than extend to Ireland the English Dissenters' 
l^Iarriage Bill, passed under the government of Lord Mel- 
bourne ; and so did the Praemunire Eepeal Bill, for practi- 
cally these penalties were never enforced ; but the Unitarian 
Bill was denounced by Philpotts of Exeter as a repeal of the 
Athanasian Creed, and was severely censured even by the 
mild and wary Blomfield of London. 

I had now great satisfaction in fighting under the Lynd- 
hurst banner, to which I had so often been opposed — 

" — in this glorious and well fought field 
We kept together in our chivalry." 

The three bills being placed on the Statute Book,* he 
thanked me very handsomely, both in private and in public, 
for the aid I had afforded him. The cry raised on this occa- 
sion by the Intolerants was very absurd ; for, as might have 
been foreseen, the Church of England has never flourished so 
much as since all real grievances of Dissenters and Roman 
Catholics have been removed. 

Lyndhurst, however, would not coalesce with me in my 
attempts at legislation. Having established the point by 
the Libel Bill of 1843, that upon a private prosecution for 
libel the truth might be given in evidence, I now wished 
this to be extended to public prosecutions for libel by the 
Attorney General, instancing the case of tlic criminal infor- 
mation against the ' IMorning Post ' nows2)apcr for alleging 

* 7 and 8 Vic, c. 15, c. 81, c. 102. 



LIFE OF LOKD LTNDHUEST. 153 

that transports in which troops had been embarked were not CHAP, 
seaworthy, — a fact which might haye been distinctly proved, ' 



and which, for the public good, ouglit to have been made a.d. i844. 
known. But, most unaccountably, I was now opposed by 
Lord Deuinan^ who delivered a violent speech against ^^^^ ^^^' 
allowing the truth to be given in evidence in any prose- the law of 
cution for libel whatever. He pointed out the hardship 
lately imposed on the refugee Duke of Brunswick, against 
whom, while residing in England, very serious charges 
had been made by the press. It so happened that those 
charges were proved to be true; and his Serene Highness 
soon after was obliged to fly the country, — an indictment 
being found against him for subornation of perjury. All 
were astonished and grieved to hear the Chief Justice of 
England, so long a steady and rational supporter of liberty, 
thus bitterly condemn the Bill which liad passed with his 
entire approbation the year before, and which had already 
operated most beneficially. Lyndhurst in a much more 
moderate tone tried to draw a distinction between prose- 
cutions by individuals and by the government, and made 
a great impression by hinting at the possibility of a prose- 
cution for a libel imputing crimes or vices to the sovereign 
on the throne, with the privilege conferred upon the libeller • 

of bringing forward witnesses .to establish the truth of his 
charge, — the issue perhaps being whether the King had 
married a Koman Catholic, thus making our allegiance 
to depend upon the verdict of the jury. 

I expressed my readiness to introduce an exception as to 
libels on the King and Queen or the heir to the throne ; but 
my bill was thrown out on the second reading by a majority 
of 33 to 3.* 

Lyndhurst likewise, with equal success, opposed another BaiiinEnor 
bill which I introduced to allow persons who, having been f^t b!-"°^^" 
convicted of misdemeanour, and sentenced to imprisonment, Lyndhurst. 
have upon the fiat of the Attorney General sued out a writ 

* Hansard, vol. Ixxvi., pp. 395, 417. There had been a whip on the 
Ministerial side, and our benches were empty. Lord Brougham made a strong 
speech for the Bill, but being engaged out to dinner, went away without voting 
or pairing. 



154 . KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

^^j^^- of error, to be admitted to bail while tlie writ of error is 
pending. This appeal may be decided in their favour when 



A.D. 1844. the period of imprisonment has expired — the established 
practice being, according to the procedure of the Court of 
Khadamanthus, " Castigatque auditque doles " — first to 
punish, and then to consider whether the punishment was 
lawful. The Chancellor, who had always at this period an 
overwhelming majority at his beck, not only objected to the 
bill on the ground that it might be supposed to favour 
O'Connell, whose writ of error was then pending, but like- 
wise contended that it would generally be extremely mis- 
chievous, by enabling persons justly convicted of misde- 
meanours to escape punishment altogether. 
A.D. 1845. In the Session of 1845 Sir Kobert Peel's Government was 
Relation be- immensely strong, and many supposed that it would be as 
ami Lynd- durable as Sir Kobert Walpole's. His income-tax, instead of 
hurst. proving his ruin as had been foretold, had made him popular ; 

he had restored our financial credit ; his free trade measures 
had all succeeded, and, as he had hinted no change of 
opinion respecting the Corn Laws, he was still warmly sup- 
• ported by the landed aristocracy. A rumour was industriously 
spread that he was about to transfer the Great Seal to some 
• one for whom he had more respect. This, I believe, was 

without foundation. Follett had been prematurely cut off by 
disease ; Pemberton Leigh, having succeeded to a large 
fortune, had retired into the country and . taken to fox- 
hunting ; and Lyndhurst, giving no trouble in the Cabinet, 
disposed of his judicial business, if not without criticisms, 
at all events without any open scandal. The Chancellor, 
however, was certainly treated with undisguised neglect by 
his colleagues. For example, a government Irish Bill being 
in the Plouse of Lords, one clause of which was to vest in the 
Lord Lieutenant the patronage of appointing all the officers 
in all the superior courts in Dublin, an amendment was 
moved that this should, as in England, be exercised by the 
chiefs of the several courts ; and, the Chancellor supporting 
the amendment, it was carried. But in the next stage of the 
bill this decision was reversed by a ministerial majority, not- 
withstanding the taunts uttered against those who preferred 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUEST. 155 

the power of doing jobs at the Castle to the advice of the CHAP. 
Keeper of the Queen's conscience and the pure administration ' 



of justice. A.D. 1845. 

Whether spontaneously, or by command, I know not, but Bail in^ 
to my great astonishment, without any communication on passed by 
the subject to me, he early in the session introduced the Bail Lyndhmst. 
in Error Bill which he had treated so contumeliously, and, 
without any allusion to what had before passed on the 
subject, represented it as a new and beneficial measure, 
although it remained almost exactly as I had framed it. 
There was a prodigious laugh against him for his forgetfulness 
and versatility, but this he took in very good part.* The 
Bill now passed both Houses nemine dissentiente. 

He introduced, in a most beautiful speechj a bill for the Lyndhuist's 
regulation of Charitable Trusts, — taking occasion to describe ^l^ygtsBin 
with much humour the guzzling propensities of corporate 
trustees of charities, whereby the will of the donor is often 
sadly disappointed. He was particularly happy upon the 
lunch of the Lord ]\Iayor and Aldermen of London when 
going to visit some almshouses, showing how light and 
delicate the dishes then tasted were, lest they should spoil 
the solid dinner looming in the distance.f I may here 
observe that in making an introductory statement of any 
measure he ever displayed powers unrivalled in either House 
of Parliament. Whatever the subject might be, no one could 
be within sound of his voice without earnestly listening, and 
warmly admiring, although he might remain unconvinced. % 

He next brought in a bill which went a great way Jew Bill. 
towards the emancipation of the Jews. When Attorney 
General I had passed an Act to allow a Jew to be sheriff of a 
corporate town — not then venturing to go farther, from the 
dread of entire failure — but now Jews were to be permitted 
to fill all corporate offices, and almost everything was to be 
open to them except a seat in parliament. I privately 
advised him to go all lengths, but he said " he was afraid 

* Hansiird. Ixxviii., 123, 

t He niiglit liavo mentioned one Lord Mayor who, although famou.s for liis 
gastronomy, denounced luncheon altogetlier, saying, "I consider luuciieou as 
an insult to breakfast and an injury to dinner." 

:J: Hansard, vol. Ixxx., pp. 700, 782. 



156 KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, of the Bishops and Sir Kobert Inglis." In public I con- 

' gratiilatecl him upon his growing liberality, and expressed 

A.D. 1845. a hope that, in another session of parliament, we should find 

him pointing out the inconsistency of the clamour that the 

country would be " unchristianized " by allowing a few Jews 

\ to sit in the House of Commons while we are willing to allow 

the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London all to be Jews, — 

when Jew^s may be sheriffs and justices of the peace, when a 

Jew may preside in the Central Criminal Court over all the 

Queen's Judges, when Jews holding Lidia stock join in 

governing India, and when Jews, having the same right to 

the elective franchise as Christians, by their representatives 

legislate for the empire.* 

Bills thrown In return Lyndhurst supported bills which I introduced for 

out by Go- ^Y^Q Abolition of Deodands ; for 2:ivin2: compensation to the 

vernment m ^ ^ ^ n n ir 

the Com- families of persons killed by negligence, and for allowing 
Lyndhurl^t ^'^^^'^^ ^^ ^® brouglit agaiust British subjects resident abroad 
supported in for causcs of actiou which had accrued within the realm. 
These bills were all sent down to the Commons ; but there 
the Government refused to support them, and they were lost. 
In great wrath I moved for a Committee in the House of Lords 
to search the Commons' Journals, and to report how these 
bills had been disposed of after reaching the Lower House, — 
intimating what the probable result of the search would be, 
complaining of the disrespectful usage of the Lord Chancellor 
by his colleagues, and denouncing the mischievous discord 
which seemed to prevail between the members of the Govern- 
ment in the two Houses ; for the Duke of Wellington, as well 
as the Lord Chancellor, had voted for tlie bills, and had ex- 
pressed particular satisfaction with the bill intended to meet 
fatal accidents by railways. Brougham followed, and was much 
more severe than I liad ventured to be, — charging Sir James 
Graliam, the Home Secretary, with the crime of usurping the 
looolsack. Lyndhurst remained silent, but looked unhappy, 
as if struck with a presentiment of his oflicial death. This 
was at no great distance, but it came about in a manner 
which no one then anticipated, and wliich gave him little 

♦ lliinsuril, vol. Ixxviii., pp. h\^\ 77."), 885. 



LIFE OF LOED LTNDHUEST. 157 

pain ; for the ministerial vessel went to the bottom, and CHAP, 
instead of the Chancellor being thrown overboard, as he ' 



proper 
treatment of 
cases of 
breach of 



dreaded, the rest of the crew perished with him. a.d. i845 

There Avere several cases of breach of privilege this session Lyndhm-st's 
which, by the advice of the Chancellor, were treated very 
properly. Actions for defamation were brought without leave 
of the House for evidence given upon oath before select com- privilege 
mittees. According to Lord Denman's doctrine in StockdaJe v. 
Hansard the Peers ought not to have interposed, — leaving it 
to tlie courts in which the actions were brought to determine 
whether the actions were - fitly commenced or not. But, by 
order of the House, the plaintiffs were brought to the bar in 
custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms, and, being ordered to remain 
in custody till the actions were discontinued, were afterwards, 
on a humble petition stating that the actions had been 
discontinued, set at liberty, with a suitable rej)rimand by the 
Lord Chancellor. To my great surprise, Lord Denman did 
not oppose or protest against this proceeding.* 

The only point on which I differed from my noble and Q. Whether 
learned friend, the Lord ChancelloU^ this session, was re 



the Sove- 
reign can 

specting the Queen's proposed visit to Germany without constitu- 

leave the 



realm with- 
out makincr 



appointing Lords Justices to represent her during her ab- 
sence. Such an appointment had invariably taken 23lace on 
the sovereign going beyond the sea ever since the time of Lords Jus- 
the Norman Conquest ; and, as it was quite certain that the 
Great Seal could not be carried out of the realm without an 
impeachable offence being committed, there was strong reason 
for arguing that it could not be used within the realm by 
warrant from the sovereign signed out of the realm, — the 
facility of communication between Vienna and Dover by 
means of steamboats and railways not altering the ancient 
law. However, the Chancellor laid down, and the House 
agreed, that although the Great Seal could not be used out 
of tlie realm, the mandates of the sovereign by sign manual 
out of the realm are valid, and that it is in the breast of the 
sovereign, on going abroad, to appoint a re[)resentative or not, 
as may be deemed for the public good. I rather think that 
this was a stretch of authority, and that it would have been 

» Hansard, vol. Ixxxii., pp. 303, 384, 526, 1G78. 



158 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, better to have liad the matter settled by Act of Parliament — 
VII. . . . . 

' but little practical inconvenience is likely to arise from the 

A.o. 1845. innovation. No minister will advise a proclamation by 

the sovereign for summoning or dissolving Parliament to be 

signed at Calais, and the validity of proper acts of state done 

abroad in the common administration of the government will 

never be questioned. 

Sudden The autumu of 1845 witnessed the most sudden and 

political unexpected turn in domestic politics recorded in our party 

changes in -^ ■»- sr j 

the autumn annals. When Parliament was prorogued all was calm and 
prosperous, and the most calculating and clear-sighted lover 
of place would have been delighted to declare himself an 
adherent of the existing administration. Before Parliament 
met again that administration expired, and, although it w^as 
apparently brought to life again, it then rather .resembled a 
dead body moved by galvanism. I have never heard, from 
any authentic source, what part Lyndhurst took when, famine 
approaching by reason of the potato hlight, and Lord John 
Eussell having written his famous Edinburgh letter recom- 
mending an immediate abolition of the Corn Laws, Peel 
himself proposed this measure to his Cabinet, and resigned 
that it might be carried by his successor. Certain it is that 
the Chancellor expressed great joy when, from the oppo- 
sition of Lord Grey to the appointment of Lord Palmerston 
as Foreign Minister, Lord John Eussell failed in forming 
a government. This failure, nevertheless, was a most fortu- 
nate occurrence for the Whig party and for the country. 
Lord John Russell could not have carried the repeal of the 
Corn Laws, and if by any chance he had succeeded in the 
attempt, his immediate and permanent exclusion from power 
must have followed. 

I saw Lyndhurst several times in the beginning of 1846, 
but he preserved a deep silence respecting the measures of 
the ensuing session, perhaps (among other reasons) because 
he did not know them. 

At last on the memorable 27tli day of January, 1846, I 
was present in the House of Commons when Poel made his 

reel's r,i 11 fjimous speech recommending the repeal of the Corn Laws. 

[nlr[Krn ^^^^ moHiing, at 10 o'clock', I went inlo tlio House of 

Laws. 



A.D. 1846 
Introduc- 
tion of Sir 
Kobert 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 159 

Lords to hear the argument upon a Writ of Error. As CHAP. 
I entered Lyndhurst beckoned to me, and when I approached ' 



him he exclaimed in a loud voice, "Campbell! I find the Corn a.d. 1846. 
Laws are all a humbug. I used to suppose that the prosperity Lord Lynd- 
of our agriculture and of our commerce all depended upon g|^e!^\^^is- 
Protection ; but I tell you Protection is a humhug. There is covery in 
nothing for it now but Free Trade.^' He then informed me that economy. 
"although Stanley had gone out because he was so prejudiced 
as to stick up for Protection, he himself, and all the other 
members of the Cabinet, had resolved to sacrifice themselves 
for the good of their country. The truth I believe to be that, 
calculating upon the streiigth of the Government, the tempo- 
rary aid of the Whigs, the favour of the Court and the jivestige 
of Peel's name, they all expected to carry the abolition of the 
Corn Laws and still to retain office. And so they probably 
would if Lord George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli had not 
been raised up, miraculously as it were, for their destruction. 
Once on a time an intimate familiarity had subsisted between 
Lyndhurst and Disraeli, and it was believed that they used 
jointly to write articles in ' The Times ' against Lord Melbourne. 
Lyndhurst thus took a peculiar interest in Disraeli's new 
career, and as I went frequently to the House of Commons to 
hear him abuse Peel, which the Chancellor could not decently ' 
do, he curiously interrogated me about Disraeli's salient points 
and the effect which they produced. When I told him, 
according to the truth, that the House seemed to relish 
very much the jokes upon Peel's alleged hypocrisy, pedantry, 
and inconsistency, Lyndhurst could hardly conceal his 
satisfaction, although he might have seen that this feeling 
in the House of Commons must speedily work his own 
downfall. 

An unmistakable forewarning followed. This was the Rejectioa of 
rejection by the Lords of the Chancellor's "Charitable Trusts bie ^J^'il'"" 
Bill," which in the preceding year he had carried through Bill by a 
the Upper House without difficulty, although from the late- whi:4s and 
ness of the season when it reached the Commons it had been l^'^tection- 
dropped there. Now it was considerably improved in its 
details, and several clauses to which I had most objected had 
been omitted or modified. But the Protectionist Peers, headed 



ists 



160 



REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VII. 

A.D. 1846. 



and of the 
Irish Coer- 
cion Bill. 



Death by 
Accidents 
Bill. Mode 
of estimat- 
ing the da- 
mages in 
case of ail 
actual or ex- 
pectant 
Chancellor. 



by the Duke of Eichmond — to show their spite — offered to 
coalesce with us in throwing it out, and we, alas ! had not 
the virtue to withstand the temptation. Accordingly it was 
thrown out on the second reading, and I must with shame 
confess very factiously . I can only say that the Protectionists 
were more to blame than the Whigs ; for we had always 
expressed a dislike of the Bill, whereas in the preceding 
session they had cordially supported it. Lyndhurst and 
Brougham have often taunted us all bitterly, both in public 
and private, with this coalition, and I have never been able 
to do more than plead in mitigation the force of bad example 
and pray privilege for a " first fault." 

The loss of the * Charitable Trusts Bill ' was the death- 
warrant of Sir Eobert Peel's administration ; but it did not 
receive the coiijo de grace till the division in the House of Com- 
mons upon the * Irish Coercion Bill,' when there was a similar 
coalition with a similar result, and this proved instantly fatal. 

In the mean time business had gone on in the House of 
.Lords as if nothing extraordinary were to happen. I again 
pushed through the ' Deodand Abolition Bill,' and the ' Death 
by Negligence Compensation Bill.' The latter was now a 
good deal discussed, and Lyndhurst showed some disposition 
to cavil at it. He pretended rather to stand up for the old 
common law maxim that " the life of man is too valuable to 
allow of any estimate of the damages to be given for the loss 
of it." I said : — 

"If a Lord Chancellor were killed by an accident on a railway 
there might certainly be a difiSculty in estimating the sum his 
family should receive by way of compensation for the pecuniary 
loss; this would depend much upon the probable tenure of his 
office, if he had survived ; for he might be likely to retain it for 
twenty years, or he might be on the point of being ejected from 
it by an inevitable change of ministry." 

Lord Lyndhurst. — " There is a much more difficult case which 
may arise than that which my noble and learned friend has had 
the kindness to suggest. If my noble and learned friend should 
unfortunately himself fall a sacrifice to railway negligence, 
being at present without office and without retired allowance, 
how would a jury be able to estimate the value of his hopes ?" * 



Hansard, vol. Ixxxvi., p. 174. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHURST, 161 

The Bill, however, did pass both Houses, notwithstanding ™^^- 
a powerful exertion of railway interest to crush it, and it has ' 



been the most popular of all my efforts at legislation. a.d. 1846. 

1 ought here gratefully to notice the very handsome com- 
pliment which Lord Lyndhurst this session publicly paid me 
as an author. Shortly before the commencement of the 
session I had published the first three volumes of the ' Lives 
of the Chancellors.' He took occasion in the course of a 
debate to praise the work in very high terms, and his 
remarks being received with loud cheers from all parts of the 
House, I rose in my place and bowed my thanks. 

When the Corn Laws Abolition Act came to the House of i^ow the 
Lords, I said to Lyndhurst that he was bound to defend it. Abolition 
"No," answered he, "this is unnecessary, for the Duke of J5|^.^^^f^f 
Wellington has secured a majority in its favour, although he House" of 
thinks as badly of it as I should have done seven years ago. 
Thus he addressed a Protectionist Peer, who came to lament 
to him that he must on this occasion vote against the Govern- 
ment, having such a very bad opinion of the bill. 'Bad 
opinion of the bill, my Lord ! You can't have a worse opinion 
of it than I have ; but it was recommended from the Throne, 
it has passed the Commons by a large majority, and we must 
all vote for it. The Queen's Government must be sup- 
ported.' " * The argument arising out of opinion being thus 
silenced, the Protectionists were helpless and the bill passed. 
However, they vowed vengeance against the author of it, and 
Peel was soon ejected, with all his colleagues, as well those 
who approved as those who abhorred it. 

* In truth this is pretty much the substance of the Duke's speech in 
moving the second reading. 



VOL. VITL M 



162 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

OUT OF OFFICE. — 1846-1854. 

CHAP. Lyndhukst viewed his final descent from power verv calmlv. 
VIII . . . 

^ I really believe that from growing infirmities (for he was lame 

A.D. 1846. of one leg and his eyesiglit was much impaired) he was not 
Lyndhurst's sorry to retire into private life, so that he shared the fate of 
naSlrof^" ^^^ ^'^^^ ^^ ^^^^ party, and did not appear to be ignominiously 
office. discarded by them.' 

It was on the 6th of July that the government was trans- 
ferred. The outgoing and incoming Ministers met at Buck- 
ingliam Palace, and Lyndhurst having resigned the Great 
Seal into Her Majesty's hands, it was delivered to Lord Cot- 
tenham. Lyndhurst, again an ex-Chancellor, very cordially 
congratulated me on becoming a member of the Cabinet and 
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. On this very day the 
Benchers of the Inner Temple were to give a grand banquet, 
to which the heads of the law had been invited some weeks 
before. Lyndhurst, Brougham, and myself meeting in the 
House of Lords at five o'clock, we agreed to go together, and 
Lady Lyndhurst took us in her coach. 

Being set down at the Temple, we had a sumptuous dinner 
from the Benchers, drank their wine copiously, and passed 
a very merry evening. The chair was filled by Sir Charles 
Wetherell. He was extravagantly ultra-Tory and ultra- 
High Church, but a most honourable and excellent man, 
who had resigned the office of Attorney General in 1829 
rather than agree to the Boman Catholic Emancipation Bill. 
He gave successively the healths of all the distinguished 
guests, not concealing his own jirinoiples, but saying nothing 
to hurt the feelings of any oiu\ 

Lyndhurst made an exceedingly good-humoured and beau- 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 163 

tiful speech, alluding to tlie alacrity with t\ hich he had that CHAP. 

morning, for the last time, resigned the Great Seal, and the '__ 

pleasure with which he found himself among his old asso- ^.d. i846. 
ciates, whose company and good opinion must be the chief 
solace of his remaining days. 

Brougham delivered a very warm panegyric upon the ex- 
Chancellor, and expressed a hope that he would make a good 
end, " although to an expiring Chancellor, Death was now 
armed with a new terror." 

The Chairman, in proposing my health, called me his 
" noble and biographical fi-iend," and expressed great confi- 
dence in my discrimination and impartiality if I should live 
to delineate the virtues of Lyndhurst and Brougham. 

I said that my great hope was yet to see Wetherell himself 
in the "Marble Chair;" and then, although I might not 
agree in all his opinions, I should be delighted to cele- 
brate his honourable career and to hold up for the imitation 
of posterity his chivalrous devotion to principle, at whatever 
sacrifice. Some said that I then maliciously looked askance 
at Lyndhurst; but this is untrue, for I then had forgotten 
that his path had ever been otherwise than straightforward, 
or that he had not through life been disinterested and con- 
sistent. 

We were afterwards much shocked by learning that during 
this merriment Lord Chief Justice Tindal, whom we all knew 
and much esteemed, had been in his last agony. AVe had 
known of his being unwell, but were not aware that his life 
was in any danger. 

Lyndhurst now talked very freely — I may say licentiously — Lyndimrst's 
of all parties and all public men ; but he retained a hearty j"^''f *^ ^^ 
grudge against the Whigs, and although I believe he had no aiec^neiiia- 
longer any notion of again coming into office, he would have l^y"e|j^t]je 
been delighted to have done a mischief to Lord John llussell's iveiites and 
government. With this view he entered into an intrigue to tionists, and 
brinfr about a reconciliation between Sir Eobert Peel and the *f *"';". ^"^ 

'^ . . . tlie Whigs. 

Protectionists, urging that their cause of quarrel was gone, 
and that they ought to combine against the common enemy. 

The rather unpopular Bill for allowing the free importation 
of foreign sugar, whether produced by free or slave labour, 

M 2 



164 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOBIA. 

^Y^jf' was then before the House of Commons, and he suggested 

that by a coalition between Protectionists and Peelites, under 

A.D. 1846. the title of the " Xew Conservatives," the Bill and its authors 
might be at once crushed. This was not a very happy thought, 
considering that the Sugar Bill really was a free-trade mea- 
sure — upon which Protectionists and Peelites were not very 
likely to unite — so that the attempt was better calculated to 
widen than to close the breach between them. 

Never was any scheme more unfortunate, for it not only 
utterly failed, but it drew down upon its projector the violent 
resentment of those for whose benefit it was intended. Lord 
Stanley happened to be in the country and knew nothing of it 
till it had blown up. He then, using a favourite expression of 
his, declared that "he would not have touched it with the tono-s." 
Being now the acknowledged head of the Conservatives, he 
considered himself the future Prime Minister, and he had no 
notion of again playing second fiddle to Peel. Lord George 
Bentinck, who was in London, on receiving the proposal from 
Lyndhurst, was thrown into a frenzy of passion. He imme- 
diately went down to the House of Commons and denounced 
it. From a mere man of the turf he had been suddenly con- 
stituted the leader of a great party, and he was shoclied not 
only with the notion of coalescing with the faithless Peel, 
but of being again reduced to insignificance. He therefore 
used some very strong language against "the meddling ex- 
Chancellor." This Lyndhurst replied to in the House of 
Lords, referring in a very cutting manner to Lord George's 
former pursuits. Lord George rejoined in the House of Com- 
mons, and after giving a very circumstantial account of the 
intrigue to throw oat the Sugar Bill — about which the ex- 
Chancellor was so impatiently hot as to send a messenger to 
rouse him out of bed at night — thus proceeded : — 

" Sir, I will not say of Lord Lyndhurst as he has said of me, 
that his calumnies are coar{<e or that his weapons are of the same 
description. I will not deny that his sai'casms are dressed in more 
classical language th.-in mine ; Iadmi]-e the sharp edge and polish 
of his weapons. I admit that, while I wield the broadsword and 
the bayonet, he lias skill to use the rapier, and uses it with the 
power of a giant. But / am an honest man, and my past career 



LIFE OF LORD LTKDHUEST. 165 

will bear a scrutiny perhaps better tlian that of the meddling ^-S^t^' 
ex-Chancellor." * 



Peel, although more guarded in his demeanour, was equally ^•^' •^^^^* 
indignant. Lyndhurst had been so infatuated as to ask an 
interview with him, that he might explain to him and gain 
his consent to the coalition. Confident in the success of his 
free-trade policy, and foreseeing that the Protectionists would 
soon be brought to shame. Peel shrunk from their contact. 
The particulars of the interview we know from a letter which 
Peel wrote to Lyndhurst, and insisted on his reading in the 
House of Lords : — 

"You wrote to me a note expressing a wish for an interview 
which took place on the same day. At that interview you in- 
formed me of a fact of which I was not previously aware — that 
you had been in communication with some members of the late 
Government and of the party which supported it, with a view to 
tlie healing of animosities and the reconstruction of the Conser- 
vative party ; that before you went farther you had resolved to 
speak to me ; that the part you were taking was a disinterested 
one, for that your own return to office was out of the question. 
My answer was that I must decline being any party to the pro- 
ceeding to which you referred. I said that the return to office 
was as little in my contemplation as it was in yours, and that, as 
I was not prepared to enter into any party combination with that 
view, I felt it incumbent upon me under such circumstances, to 
leave to those with whom I had been previously connected in 
political life the entire liberty to judge for themselves with regard 
to the formation of any new party connexion." 

This letter Lyndhurst did read in the House of Lords, in 
the midst of a long explanation vindicating his conduct and 
dwelling upon the purity of his motives, which he thus con- 
cluded : — 

"Everyone knows that I am no longer a candidate for office; 
that in consequence of a severe illness the holding of office during 
the last session has been a painful and irksome task for me ; and 
that I am desirous of passing the sliort remainder of my daj^s 
among my family and my friends; and nothing, even on this 



* A. common joko against Lord George Bentinck was that he was "a man 
of a stable mind," but he was, in truth, one of the most honom-able of mankind. 



166 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 



A.D. 1846. 



Lyndhurst 
resolves 
never asjain 
to meddle 
with poli- 
tics. 



Lyndhurst 
in retire- 
ment. 



occasion, should have drawn me forth, but the virulent personal 
attack made upon me."* 

Lyndhurst never forgave Peel the cruel rebuff which he 
now received instead of expected thanks, with perhaps an 
offer of becoming Chancellor quinto. Peel relented as little, 
and the estrangement continued down to the premature death 
of that distinguished statesman. In reality there never had 
been much love lost between them. Peel, having soon dis- 
covered Lyndhurst to be pretty much devoid of principle and 
very unscrupulous as to the performance of the duties of his 
office, had never acted with him cordially, and always re- 
garded liim with suspicion.! Lyndhurst, on the other hand, 
was in the habit of laughing at Peel's official pedantry, affec- 
tation of secrecy, constrained manners, and incapacity to pro- 
nounce his " h's." X 

Lyndhurst was so much disgusted with the bad success of 
his attempt to upset Lord John Kussell's government and to 
re-construct the Conservative party, that he resolved never 
again to speak in Parliament or to meddle with politics. He 
said to me, " I have as little respect for the Whigs as ever ; 
but you have nothing more to fear from me — my career is 
run." He really was quite sincere, and he had then no arriere 
pensee. At another time, soon after, he observed to me," " I may 
vegetate five or six years longer ; but I am politically dead." 

He long adhered to his resolution. He continued to attend 
the House of Lords as an evening lounge, but for three whole 
years he never opened his mouth, unless once to say a few 
words on a Eailway bill, nor did he ever vote in any party 
division. 

I urged him to attend the hearing of appeals in the House 

* 88 Ilansnrd, 974. 

t This I discovered so far bnck ns the yenr 1828, wlion not yet having 
entered Parliament, I was serving on the Real Troporty Coinmis>sion, Lyndhurst 
being Chancellor and Peel Home Secretary. They nearly quarrellctl about 
appointing the secretary to the connni.ssion, and Peel ttxik the whole luauagc- 
nient of the commission into liis own hands. 

X Py hard labour, Peel had acquired the faculty of pronouncing /jT when it 
occurred at the beginning of a word. Thus, ho would siiy "House" and 
** nnHtinfjx" not, in Litncashirc fasliion, "ouse," or ^' udimjs ;'' but h in the 
middle of a word he would still omit. Thus ho would say, "the man 6e-are« 
well .who always ad-cres to his friends." 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHURST. 167 

of Lords and in the Privy Council, reminding him that the CHAP, 
retired allowance of 5000^. a year to ex-Chancellors was upon '__ 



the understanding that they were thus to assist in the ad- a.d. 1847. 
ministration of justice ; but he said his sight was so much 
impaired that he could not read the appeal papers properly, 
or safely take part in any decision. Unfortunately there was 
too much ground for this excuse. He was twice couched by 
an eminent oculist, and then only imperfectly recovered his 
power of vision. His lameness likewise increased upon him 
so that he could hardly walk without assistance. All his 
mental powers, however, remained in full vigour, and his con- 
versation was as sprightly and reckless as ever. 

In 1847 I had the honour of entertaining him at a dinner Fusion 
which I gave as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and strat^hedeu 
which made a considerable noise at the time. Lord Stanley House. 
had brought forward a charge against me in the House of 
Lords about the formation of the Council of the Duchy, and 
this gave rise to a good deal of angry as well as jocular dis- 
cussion. To make matters smooth, there being no real hos- 
tility intended on either side, I asked if he had any objection 
to meet the Council of the Ducby at dinner at Stratheden 
House ; to which he very good-humouredly assented. I invited 
Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Brougham, Lord Melbourne, Lord John 
Russell, Lord Clarendon, Lord Lincoln, Sir James Graham, 
and Edward Ellice, to assist. And a most jovial day we had of 
it. Strange to say, Lyndhurst declared that although he had 
abused Lord John so long and plotted so much against him, 
now was the first time that he ever dined in his company. 
At this *• Love-feast " Whig and Tory, Protectionist and Free- 
trader, occupant of office and expectant of office — all drank 
wine with each other, and instead of politics being banished, 
the doctrines and faults of all parties were freely made the 
subject of ridiculous comment. This licence of talk was 
highly to Lyndhurst's taste, and he was so delighted and 
genial, tliat in going away with Brougham he left a message 
for me with my butler that " he ho[)ed the dinner would be 
annual while his Lordship remained Chancellor of the Duchy." 

During the rec6ss of Parliament Lyndhurst spent the whole nis countiy 
of his time at Tarville, a very nice country house, with beau- ''""'^*^- 



168 



REIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 



A.D. 1847- 
1850. 



His Life in 
London. 



Lyndhurst 
again 

plunges into 
politics, and 
becomes a 
Frotection- 
Ut. 



tiful gardens and a moderate-sized farm, which he had hired 
in Oxfordshire ; and here he pretended to devote himself to 
improved methods for the raising of flowers, corn, and cattle ; 
but his time was spent in reading the newspapers, in 
sauntering about his grounds, in corresponding with Lord 
Brougham, from whom he almost daily received a letter, and 
in quiet chat with a few friends v>^ho paid short visits to him. 
Although so well grounded at the University both in classics 
and mathematics, he had no real pleasure in literary or 
scientific pursuits, and his reading did not extend beyond the 
volumes supplied by a circulating library. When living in 
London in his father's old house, George street, Hanover 
square, he had a daily call from Lord Brougham, who brought 
him the gossip of the clubs. All rivalry having ceased, there 
was now equal cordiality between the two — with this dif- 
ference, that Brougham generally spoke rather respectfully 
of Lyndhurst behind his back, while Lyndhurst, behind 
Brougham's back, was always ready to join in exaggerating 
his faults and in laughing at his eccentricities. During the . 
rest of the day till it was time to take an airing in his carriage, 
Lyndhurst was ready to receive all visitors who might drop 
in — and a great many came, chiefly lawyers and members of 
the eorjps diplomatique. On these occasions it was expedient 
to go late and stay the last; for I observed the practice 
to be that each visitor, on departing, furnished a subject of 
satirical remark for the master of the house and those who 
remained. 

But such tranquil pleasures began to pall upon the jaded 
appetite of the ex-Chancellor. He really had no more any 
desire for ofiice. Being nearly blind, the Great Seal was out 
of the question ; and as Lord Pj-ivy Seal, or President of the 
Council, he could have had no increase of pay beyond his 
pension, the dignity being no compensation for the trouble. 
What he did long for was the excitement of again belonging 
to a party with whom he was to attack and be attacked. He 
had his choice — Whig, Peelite, or Protectionist. 'J'he Wliigs 
he still hated, as they had been twitting him with apostacy ever 
since he first took office. The Peelitcs would have been his 
natural allies; for, M'ith his own single exception, all the 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUKST. 169 

members of Peel's Cabinet wbo, after carrying the repeal of CB.A'P. 
the Corn Laws, resigned mth him in 1846, had stuck together 



— a serried band — neither amalgamating with Whigs nor a.d. 1850. 
Protectionists, Bat he knew that they looked upon him as 
little better than a traitor ever since his clumsy and cala- 
mitous intrigue about the Sugar Duty Bill. He therefore 
made advances to the Protectionists, and they were delighted 
to enrol him in their ranks. As the event afterwards proved, 
they dreadfully needed men of reputation and experience 
as partisans, insomuch that it seemed impossible to form 
a government out of them, if by any chance such a task 
should ever be assigned to their chief. Damaged as Lynd- 
hurst was, they hailed him " Deus ex machind " / He was 
much flattered with a reception which would have been 
impossible had Lord George Bentinck survived, but which 
was facilitated by the ancient liaison between Lyndhurst and 
Benjamin Disraeli, w^ho was now acknowledged, though most 
reluctantly, by the country squires, as their leader in the 
House of Commons. 

We of the Government had not heard of the new recruit Lyndhuist's 
to tlie Protectionists, when one evening — Lord Stanley u^^^iJ^he^Ca 
having made a very mischievous motion for the purpose of "ada Com- 
compelling the Crown to disallow an Act passed by the 
Canadian Legislature for grantiug compensation to those 
who had suffered losses in the suppression of the rebellion, 
and having been well answered by Lord Grey, the Colonial 
Secretary, — to the astonishment of the whole House, slowly 
rose Lord Lyndhurst. 

"With grave 
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed 
A pillar of state ; deep on his front engraven 
Deliberation sat, and public care ; 
And princely counsel in his face yet shone, 
Majestic though in ruin." 

And thus he spoke : — 

" My Lords, it is several years since I intruded myself on your 
notice, and I thought I never should have addressed you again ; 
but seeing the peril to which this great empire is exposed, and 
recollecting the important part w^hich I have had to take in 



peni^ation 
Bill. 



170 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



VIII. 

A.D. 1850. 



CHAP, guiding its counsels under successive monarclis, I have thonght 
I should ill discharge my duty to the Crown and to the people 
if T longer remained silent. This may be the last time that my 
voice may be ever heard within these walls, but T could not 
descend to the tomb with peace of mind if I did not make a 
dying effort to save my country." 

Such was the procemium to the most factious, the most de- 
mocratical, and the most sophistical speech I ever heard iu 
Parliament. He declared that the Act of the Canadian 
Legislature ought to be disregarded, because, as he said, it 
was passed against the will of the people ; and that under 
these circumstances the people had a right to say how the 
prerogative of the Crown was to be exercised, as this prero- 
gative had been created by them for their own benefit. He 
then reviewed various acts of the Canadian as well as the 
Imperial legislature, misconstruing and perverting them, and 
pretty plainly indicated that the Canadians ought again 
to hoist the standard of rebelKon rather tlian submit to such 
misrule. 

I w^as called upon by Lord Lansdowne to answer him, 
which I am sorry to say I did with considerable intem- 
perance, and in a tone which might have been very successful 
in the House of Commons, but was unsuited to the " ears 
polite " of their Lordships. Amongst other things supposed 
to be unjustifiably personal and offensive, although resting on 
the undoubted basis of truth, I said: — 

" My Lords, I ought not to be surprised at the extraordinary 
speech which has just been delivered, having been well ac- 
quainted with my noble and learned friend for a vast many 
years. He reminds you of the time when he held office under 
the Crown. The sentiments we have heard from him to-night 
are very different from those which he then uttered, for your 
Lordships m,ust be aware that he then generally took the side of 
arbitrary power and expressed great horror of insurrectionary and 
tumultuary rule, I might almost say oi jpopular privileges. But, my 
Lords, I am old enough to have known my noble and leai'ned 
friend in an earlier part of his career, when, as he has often truly 
said, he was not a Whig — when he held pure democracy in high 
respect, and when he strongly sympathised with those who con- 
tended for the holy right of insurrection. Naturally enough, such 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUKST. 171 

are again his principles — now when, as lie has told you with so CHAP, 
much solemnit}^, his career is drawing to its close — 



• On revient toujours a.d. 1850. 

A ses premieres amours.' " 

I then followed him through his misrepresentations and 
sophisms, but by no means so efficiently as I might have 
done, for I perceived that the House thought I had trans- 
gressed the bounds of propriety. Lord Stanley answered 
me, and handled me unmercifully, dwelling particularly on 
the bad taste of assailing so bitterly a venerable peer who 
had declared that this was probably the last time his voice 
would ever be heard within these walls, although Lord 
Stanley himself well knew that this was a mere figure of 
rhetoric, and tbat the speech was meant as a first contribu- 
tion of the '• venerable peer," under an alliance for carrying 
on an active campaign against the Government. Lord Lans- 
downe followed, but said hardly a word in my defence, illus- 
trating a remark I have often heard made, that the Whigs 
never stand up for each other, while the Tories will not allow 
even the dead body of a slain comrade to fall into the hands 
of the enemy.* 

Next morning, meeting Lyndhurst in a Select Committee of 
the House of Lords on a Law Bill, he came up and spoke to 
me, as if nothing had happened. He continued thenceforth to 
vote steadily with Lord Stanley ; and, forgettiug that he had 
discovered jprotectton to he a liumhug, he professed a desire to 
see the Protectionists in power, although they still expressed 
a determined resolution to restore the "sliding scale" as soon 
as they could, by an appeal to the people upon a dissolution 
of Parliament. 

He did not again speak for a twelvemonth, nor until I had Perpetual 
been removed from the arena of party politics by being tvvTen Lord 
appointed Chief Justice of EnHand. He then invited me to ^^y^^^^iurst 

, . . ^ . and Lord 

duiner, and desiring me to fill a bumper of still chamjjar/ne, CampbeiL 
he said to me, *' Here, Campbell, in this loving cup let us 

* The motion on the Canada Rebellion Compensation Bill had been well 
imagined, and had almost proved successful. On the division tliero was a 
majority against us of Peers present ; and by calling proxies we had only upon 
the whole a majority of three. 



172 REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, drown for ever all our animosities." From that time to the 

VIIT. 

^_ present there has been between us in public, as well as in 

A.D. 1851. private, a cordial good understanding, and a reciprocation of 

civilities. 
Lyndhurst In the Sessiou of 1851 Lyndhurst seemed to have renewed 
pofiticai ^is youth, and to be starting on a fresh career. No aspiring 
career. youtli, returned for the first time to the House of Commons 
and desiring to make himself a name, could be more solicitous 
or more persevering in seeking opportunities to come forward 
as an orator and an agitator. Till Lord John Kussell was 
forced to resign, Lyndhurst was always putting questions and 
making motions, with a view to harass the Government ; 
and when Stanley, now Lord Derby, became Minister (utterly 
renouncing the Peelites, who joined the Whigs in opposition), 
he took the new Government under his special guardianship, 
ready at all times to support it by praising its measures and 
the men who composed it, including Sugden, the new Chan- 
cellor, hitherto an object of his special aversion. 
Lyndhurst In the beginning of the Session of 1851, when the Whigs 
tiousin^'the ^^^^^ clung to office, although in a "staggering state," Lynd- 
i^ession of hurst tried to bring fresh obloquy upon them by a motion 
respecting Mazzini and the Italian refugees, representing that 
they were countenanced and encouraged in their plots for 
stirring up insurrection on the Continent by the government 
of England, and that Austria in particular had great reason 
to complain of this breach of the law of nations.* He was 
abetted on this occasion by Lord Aberdeen, who as yet had 
shown no tendency towards the Whigs, and seemed ready to 
join Lord Derby if the stumblingblock of Protection, which 
alone divided them, could in any way be got rid of. Now 
Lyndhurst began to hope that his plan for a reconstruction 
of the Conservative party, which had failed so signally in 
1846, might yet succeed. But, for reasons incomprehensible 
to me, every attempt of this soi't was still steadily opposed by 
Lord Derby. Although without recruits from the Peelites he 
could not expect to form a permanent administration, he would 
make no concession to them, and he recklessly irritated them 
by ridicule. 

♦ 115 Hansard, 621. 



1851. 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUKST. 173 

Lord Truro, who had become Chancellor, had incurred the CHAP. 

. VIII 
ill-will of Lord Brougham by very properly refusing to make '__ 



a brother of his a Yice-Chancellor ; and there was now a a.d. i85i. 
combination between Lord Brougham and Lord Lyndhurst 
to drive him from the woolsack. They took a dexterous 
advantage of his antijDathy to law reform, which he had not 
the prudence to disguise. 

Lyndhurst attacked him violently for allowing Lord John 
Kussell to bring in a bill in the House of Commons for 
reforming the Court of Chancery, instead of introducing it 
himself in the House of Lords. This bill Lyndhurst laughed 
at with great felicity, and, I must admit, with some justice. 
Alluding to several ministerial defeats which Lord John 
had recently experienced, he said, — 

" One of the enactments of the bill was to transfer, by a sort 
of sleight-of-hand movement, all the patronage of his noble and 
learned friend on the woolsack into the lap of the First Lord of 
the Treasury, already sufficiently laden with patronage of this 
description. The noble Lord at the head of the Government had 
of late been worsted in contests with his foes, and now, turning 
round upon his friends, he sought to obtain a victory and to 
indemnify himself by the plunder of a colleague — 

' So much 'tis safer tbro' the camp to go 
And rob a coim-ade than despoil a foe.' 

It was gravely urged that the Lord Cliancellor was over- 
whelmed by the weight of judicial business, and that he ought to 
be relieved of his ecclesiastical patronage. This would be like 
relieving by the removal of a feather the horse whose back is 
nearly broken by his heavy load of lead." * 

A few days after, again goading Lord Truro about Chancery 
Keform, which he represented to be very urgent and very 
easy, he received the following unexpected retort : — 

" The urgency I do not deny ; but can hardly think the 
remedy is so easy, or the noble and learned Lord, who has been 
four times Chancellor, would not have been so often and so long 
in office without proposing one, instead of leaving the task 
entirely to his successors." | 

Lyndhurst next complained of a breach of the privileges of 

♦ 115 Hansard, 770. ^ IIG Hunsard, 989. 



174 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP, the Lords by the Commons, who had inserted a clause in a 
VIII. ..... 

'__ bill originating in the Lower House, whereby it was enacted 



A.D. 1851. that the Equity Judges should attend in the House of Lords 
to assist in the hearing of Equity appeals. He contended 
that such legislation could properly originate only in the 
House whose constitution and proceedings were to be affected 
by it, and further urged that in this instance legislation was 
wholly unnecessary, as the Equity Judges are usually Privy 
Councillors, and all Privy Councillors are bound, when 
summoned by the House of Lords, to attend to give their 
advice upon any point of law which may be submitted to 
them.* 

Till the very end of the session Lyndhurst continued equally 
active, charging Ministers with misconduct in the goverument 
of the colonies, and almost in every other department. The 
design was now imputed to him even of forming a party of 
his own, and himself becoming Prime Minister, that he might 
rival the fame of the octogenarian Ximenes. 
A.D. 1852. Whatever his ulterior views might be, on the meeting of 
He is still Parliament in the beginning of 1852 he was more than com- 
tiousinthe monly factious. Every evening in the House of Lords he 
1852°^°^°^ spoke at least once — frequently several times, so as to outdo 
the loquacity of Brougham — not making formal harangues, 
but putting questions, supporting or opposing petitions, and 
moving for returns, always seeking to discredit and to hasten 
the fall of the Whig Government. Although during the 
whole of his Parliamentary career he had hitherto professed 
himself an optimist as to our law and jurisprudence, saying, 
" Whatever is, is right," he seemed suddenly to have become a 
pessimist, being ready to denounce as narrow-minded bigots 
those who would allow any rag of what he had before vene- 
rated to remain untouched. A bill had been brought forward 
by the Government founded upon the Iveport of Commis- 
sioners for improving the procedure of the Common Law 
Courts. This introduced greater changes than liad been 
proposed or thought of since the reign of Edward L ; but it 
was denounced as a mere evasion by the recently reform- 
hating Lyndhurst — who expressinl a desire to do away with 
♦ llTHansiml, lOGU. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 175 

all legal forms, who in a suit of great complication, diffi- CHAP. 
culty, and value, Avas for following the course in which a '__ 



milk score is settled in the County Court, and who even a.d. 1852. 
appeared to sanction the absurd notion that in England all 
suits may be summarily decided by a Judge sitting like a 
Turkish Cadi, and instantly giving judgment when he has 
heard the verbal statement of the disputants. 

It was lucky for the cause of rational and practicable law Feb. 23rd. 
reform, that in three weeks from the commencement of this He becomes 
session the AYhis^s were oblio-ed to resio-n ; for while thev P^^^t^^^o^ 

C5 ^ ^ o r> } "of Lord 

remained languishing in office all their measures would have Derby's Go- 
been effectually obstructed. Lyndhurst showed that he had ^ ^^^ • 
no object of personal ambition to gain, further than the glory 
of being the unofficial protector of the new Government. 
Eefusing to become President of the Council, he crossed over 
to the ministerial side of the House, and was at all times pre- 
pared to extend his aegis over the head of the Premier, saying 
by his looks, — '•' I am content he shall reign : but I'll be 
Protector over him." 

He now joined most cordially and most usefully in carrying 
through and improving the Whig reforms which he had 
before opposed. Both parties were aiming at jDopularity by 
law reform, and Lyndhurst 's object was to gain for the Pro- 
tectionists the credit of all that was done in this department. 
A few triflinor alterations beino^ made in the Common Law 
Procedure Bill, which had before called forth his rejDroba- 
tion, he now eulogised it extravagantly, and he paid a very 
just tribute of applause to the Bill for abolishing Masters in 
Chancery, prepared according to the report of a Whig com- 
mission, and presented by Lord St. Leonards, the Protec- 
tionist Chancellor. Lyndhurst's zeal carried him so far as to His eulogy 
pronounce this functionary the model of every cancellarian LeJ^rds^*^' 
good quality, accomplishment, and virtue, — declaring that 
" no government ever was more fortunate in a Chancellor, and 
that the present occupant of the woolsack, besides being the 
greatest of lawyers, was distinguished by his placid temper 
and his mild and gentlemanly manners." 

During the session he himself originated only one bill, 
which arose out of the action against Mr. Salomons, the Jew, 



176 



REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 



A.D. 1852. 

His Bill to 
do away 
with the 
penalties of 
prgemuniie. 



His cele- 
brated 
speech on 
Baron de 
B ode's case. 



for sittino: and yotiiio: in the House of Commons without 
having in due form taken the Abjuration Oath, leaving- out 
the words " Upon the true faith of a Christian." This offence 
not only subjected him to a pecuniary penalty of 500?. 
recovered against him, but made him liable to the pains of 
a p-mmunire, according to Avhich he might anciently have 
been put to death by any one who met him, as having Caput 
Lujnnum. The proposed bill to meet this and all similar 
cases left the law untouched as to the necessity for taking 
the oath in the prescribed form, and preserved the pecuniary 
penalty, but it swept away all other punishments and dis- 
abilities as remnants of a barbarous age. 

Lyndhurst now spoke upon Legal Education, Chancery 
Amendment, the County Courts Jurisdiction, the Consolida- 
tion of the Criminal Law, the Law of Evidence in Scotland, 
Lunacy, the Law of Marriage and Divorce, tlie Law of Libel, 
Copyhold Tenure, the Kafir War, the State of L-eland, and 
the Convention with France for the Extradition of Criminals, 
always taking care, whatever the subject might be, to give his 
observations a ministei'ial tincture, and to have a fling at the 
Whigs. 

By one motion which he made, wholly unconnected with 
party, he acquired immense eclat. This was for the appoint- 
ment of a Select Committee to inquire into the claims of Baron 
de Bode under the treaty with France in 1815, which gave 
compensation to British subjects for the loss they liad sustained 
by French decrees of confiscation. He was now turned of 
eighty ; he was obliged to support himself on a walking- 
stick while he spoke, and he was nearly blind. But his voice 
was strong, articulate, and musical, his arrangement lucid, 
his reasoning ingenious and plausible, and he displayed a 
])Ower of memory which at any age would have appeared 
almost miraculous. He had to narrate very complicated pro- 
ceedings, extending over a very long period of time, and to 
specify numerous dates, and sums of money forming items in 
voluminous accounts, and the names of many foreign places 
and persons — yet in a speech of two hours he never was at 
i'ault, lie never hesitated, he never looked at a note, and he 
never made a mistake. This was the most wonderi'ul effort 



LIFE OF LOKD LTNDHUKST. 377 

of a public speaker I ever witnessed in all my time. He hacl ^^n^' 

a very bad case, yet he not only riveted the attention of all 

who heard him, but enlisted their sympathies on his side, and a.d. 1852. 
made all who had not before studied the facts convinced that 
he was pleading for a much injured and oppressed individual. 
But the Duke of Wellino-ton was too knowino- and too shrewd 
to be taken in. As we were leaving the House he said to me, 
" Well, I admired Lord Lyndhurst, but I was not convinced- 
What do you say to it. Lord Chief Justice ? " I stated the 
truth — that it was all delusion ; that the Baron de Bode was 
not substantially a British subject, although he happened by 
accident to be born in England ; that we should not have 
had a right to shoot or hang him (as Lyndhurst had falla- 
ciously stated), if we had found him carrying arms against 
us for the Czar of Eussia, to whom he owed allegiance; 
that the loss for which he sought compensation had not 
occurred to him as a British subject, and that as we should 
have had no right to claim this loss from France, it did not 
come within the spirit or letter of the treaty which his Grace 
had dictated at Paris. Buhe of Wellington. — " Chief Justice, 
you are right ; you are right ! you are quite right ! " Never- 
theless Lord Derby, to please Lyndhurst, granted the com- 
mittee, and the members were so selected that they made a 
unanimous report in favour of Baron de Bode's claim, to 
the amount of about a million sterling, although every 
tribunal in the country, including the House of Lords, as 
a court of a2:)peal, had, without hesitation, decided against 
him.* 

No advantage, after all, was gained by Baron de Bode, or 
the holders of '• de Bode stock," from this daring attempt, 
for Lord Derby left office without providing any fund to 
answer the claim, and it being repudiated by his successor. 
Lord Aberdeen, only five could be mustered to vote for 
it when Lyndhurst, in 1853, again brought it before the 
House. 

At the general election, in 1852, Protection was in little 

* I liad prepared myself to speak against granting the committee; but 
after Lynd hurst's brilliant oration, and the enthusiasm it created, I had not 
courage to rise. 

VOL. VIII. Ij 



178 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

^^AP. favour, but so many who called themselves "free-trade 
' Derbyites" were returned, that the permanent stability of 



A.D. 1852. Lord Derby's government appeared by no means impro- 
Biunders bablo. If he had managed well he might have remained a 
by Lord loug wliilo in offico, and, at any rate, he might have retired 
Derby's Go- fj^Qjj^ {j^ ^j-fcl^ dignity, remaining the respected head of a great 
party. But, to the deep grief of Lyndhurst, he committed a 
series of blunders. In the first place he yielded to "free- 
trade" too easily, so as to make the squires doubt his sin- 
cerity. But the fatal mistake was in bringing forward the 
budget three months sooner than was necessary or expedient 
for the public good, in the belief that it would be highly popu- 
lar, and put to silence the leaders of the Opposition, — Peelites, 
Whigs, and Kadicals. The vote condemning " Protection " 
being carried in the House of Commons, the ministers had 
only to say, " We acquiesce, though unwillingl}^, and we 
adjourn the two Houses till the spring of the next year, when, 
having had a fair hearing, we will tell you what our measures 
are to be, and you will deliberately exercise your judgment 
upon them." But, instead of this, with a flourish of trumpets 
they called upon the public to come and see them "their 
quietus make with a bare Budget" What could any reason- 
able man expect from wantonly and capriciously shifting the 
burden of taxation, relieving those who would be thankless, 
and laying new imposts on classes the most sensitive, the 
most clamorous, and the most influential. 

While tlie struggle was going on in the House of Com- 
mons we were very tranquil in the House of Lords, and 
nothing occurred to call forth the eloqiience of Lyndhurst. 
However, he came every evening the Lords met, to hear the 
news, being as anxious as if his own fame and fortune liad 
depended upon the result. He would ask me to go to the 
Commons and bring him word what tliey were doing, as from 
his lameness and blindness he could not well make his way 
through the lobbies and corridors ; but on the evening when 
the budget was actually to be opened, ho was conducted into 
a snug scat in the gallery of the House of Commons, for the 
use of the Peers, and there he remained during Disraeli's 
speech of five and a-half hours, tlie whole of which I likewise 



LIFE OF LOED LTXDHDEST. 179 

heard. With melancholy secret forebodings Lyndhurst still CHAP, 
held confident language, till, at last, suspense was put an end '__ 



on 

the down- 
fall of Lord 



to by Gladstone's reply, and the fatal decision which followed. a.d. i852. 

I must say that he then talked very rationalh/, and even Lyndhurst' 
patriotically, observing that "as nothing could save the conduct 
Derbyites from destruction, Jupiter having demented them, 
his only wish now was, for the good of the country, to see a Derby. 
strong government established, and, although he had hated 
the Whigs and had hated the Peelites as separate parties, he 
might endure the amalgamation of both, cemented by a slight 
infusion of Eadicals." Accordingly, when Lord Aberdeen's 
government was announced, he said, "Things might have 
been worse, and I am disposed to give it a fair trial." 

He was as good as his word, and his conduct through the a.d. 1853. 
whole of the long session of 1853 was unexceptionable. He 
returned to his old position in the House of Lords — a back 
row on the Opposition side — which I used to call " the Castle 
of Obstruction," but which might now be caUed "the Bulwark 
of the Constitution." He continued to be exceedingly active — 
attending select Committees on law bills in the morning, and 
the regular meetings of the House in the evening — still 
avoiding the aj)peals, except when the great Bridgewater 
case came on, in which he took a leading part. 

Without quarrelling with Lord Derby, he ceased to be Lyndhurst's 
a Derbyite; but he would not join the Coalitionists, and, tionofthe 
remaining enthely unconnected and independent, he really outrageous 
took the part which the welfare of the empire seemed to Russia. 
requii'e. The great dread he had entertained of a French 
invasion subsided on the augmentation of our fleet, and the 
embodying of the militia, and it now entirely gave way to his 
abhorrence of the outrages of the Czar Nicholas. He had 
been exceedingly intimate with Baron Brunnow, the Eussian 
Ambassador at our court, and had been induced by him several 
times to favour the absolutist autocrats who were anxious to 
put down constitutional governments all over tlie workl. But 
when lie saw that Nicholas, under pretence of protecting the 
Greek Christians in the Turkish dominions, meditated the 
dismemberment of the Turkisli em])ire, and the planting of 
the Eussian Eagle on the dome of St. Sophia, he came for- 

N 2 



180 KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOKIA. 

CHAP, ^ard as tlie champion of European independence. Standing 

^ up for tlie faith of treaties, and urging the obh'gation on this 

A.D. 1853. country to enforce them for our interest, as well as for our 
honour, he denounced " Count Nesselrode's note " which set 
forth the pretensions of Nicholas, as " the most false, sophis- 
tical, and insolent state paper ever issued by any Government 
pretending to be civilised." This declaration of Lyndhurst 
made a great sensation all over Europe, and called forth a 
flattering anathema from the Eussian Ambassador, concluding 
with the awful declaration, " I will never again sit down in 
company with the man who could speak so disrespectfully of 
my august Master." Lyndhurst thought (with most sensible 
men) that Lord Aberdeen treated the outrage of Nicholas in 
passing the Pruth and invading the Turkish provinces, with- 
out pretending to have a cause of war, with far too much 
forbearance ; but, considering that there might be some undis- 
closed reason for the seemingly timid and vacillating policy 
pursued, he forbore till the conclusion of the session to express 
any censure of the Government, or to make any observation 
which could embarrass the pacific negotiations said to be 
pending. 
Lyndhurst's During the session of 1853, Lord Lyndhurst really did 
complete ^ strivc to gain the title of "Emancipator of the Jews." In 
emancipa- j^jg heart lic had been inclined in their favour, but while in 
Jews. office he had always felt himself restrained from voting for 

any of the bills passed by the Commons for allowing them to 
sit in Parliament. After he had resigned the Great Seal he 
promised actively to take the other side, but as yet he had 
not been able to pluck up sufficient courage to speak or vote 
for any of the Jew bills which came up annually during Lord 
John Kussell's administration, from 1816 to 1851, although 
he absented himself from the division when the bills were 
thrown out by the influence of Lord Derby. At lengtli how- 
ever he was determined to follow his own inclinations on this 
important subject, and, waving his sword, he cried aloud, 
" To your tents, Israel ! " He at first meditated the direct 
and bold course of laying on the table of the House of Lords 
a bill enacting that Jews might sit in Parliament on taking 
the usual oaths in the manner most binding on their con- 



LIFE OP LORD LYNDHUEST. 181 

science, — omitting the words "on the true faith of a Chris- CHAP. 

tian," which the Judges had held in Salomons' case to be part ^_ 

of the Oath of Abjuration, and not merely to indicate the ^^^d, 1853. 
manner in which it was to be administered to Christians. 
But he deemed it more discreet, after recent growing ma- 
jorities in the House of Lords against the Jews, to propose by 
^his bill to enact a consolidation of the existing oaths of 
allegiance, abjuration, and supremacy, into one short, simple, 
and sensible oath, which might be taken by all loyal subjects, 
whatever their religious persuasion, — omitting from it such 
absurdities as a renunciation of all allegiance to the descend- 
ants of James II., who have ceased to exist for nearly a cen- 
tury, and allowing the words " on the true faith of a Christian " 
to remain as part of the oath. To such a bill he thought the 
Lords could not decently object. Then his anticipation was 
that these words would be struck out by the House of Com- 
mons, and that when the bill came back amended, the Lords 
would not venture to reject it by reason of such a slender 
and reasonable amendment. He introduced it in a very 
admirable speech, in which, after quoting passages from 
opinions of Judges showing that the Abjuration Oath was not 
passed wdth the view of excluding the Jews, he thus pro- 
ceeded : — 

" I go further, and I say that it is utterly against the principles 
of the Constitution to exclude the Jews from Parliament on any 
such ground. 1 say it is the mainspring of our glorious Consti- 
tution that no British subject — no natural-born subject of the 
Queen — ought to be deprived of the rights enjoyed by his fellow- 
subjects, unless he has committed some crime, or unless he is 
excluded by some positive enactment of the Legislature directed 
against him or against the class to which he belongs. Kone can 
be rightfully excluded unless by the concurrent voice of the two 
Houses of Parliament and with the assent of the Crown. If you 
exclude them by the casual operation of a clause which was never 
directed against them or the class to which they belong, you un- 
justly deprive them of their birthright. I say then, my Lords, 
that if I retain these words ' on the true faith of a Christian ' in 
my Bill, I retain them entirely ex necessitate and entirely against 
my own deliberate conviction." * 



* 127 Hansard, 833. 



182 



REIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 

A.D. 1853, 



Laudable at- 
tention now 
given by 
Lyndhurst 
to bills for 
amending 
the law. 



The second reading of the bill was allowed to pass without 
a division ; but, at the next stage, Lord Derby strongly ob- 
jected to the tortuous course now attempted with a view to 
reverse the repeated decisions of their Lordships; and the 
bill was thrown out by a large majority. 

During this session of Parliament there were several Select 
Committees on bills for the amendment of the law. I at- 
tended them as often as I was not kept away by my judicial 
duties in the Queen's Bench, and I almost always found 
Lyndhurst at his post, rendering valuable service. This was 
very laudable conduct ; for here he had no party or personal 
bias to follow, and there was no eclat to be obtained, for we 
sat foribus dausis. I sometimes wished to have reporters 
present, so that the dicta might be recorded, like the " Con- 
sultations " in framing the Code Napoleon. Lyndhurst 
always showed admirable good sense, as well as acuteness 
and logical discrimination. He took particular pains with a 
bill which was intended to be the first part of a Codification 
of the Criminal Law of England, and which was confined to 
*' offences against the person." After the Committee had sat 
upon it eleven days, it seemed to me to be still very crude, 
no definition even of "murder" or "manslaughter" being 
devised which would not raise new questions, and a clause 
being inserted — that, as far as concerned " offences against the 
person," the common law should be considered as repealed. 
Brougham was for immediately passing it as it stood; but, 
with Lyndhurst's concurrence, I stopped it when it came 
back to the House, with a protestation that, although I by 
no means despaired of codifying the criminal law, I should 
strenuously resist any attempt to put a part upon the Statute 
Book till the whole code was before us in a perfect form. 
All my brother Judges have since concurred in the opinion 
that the bill, if passed, would have thrown the administra- 
tion of the criminal law into utter confusion. 

Lyndliurst was likcAvisc very useful this session in su}> 
porting and improving the bill for the Ivogistration of Deeds 
respecting real i)roperty. But, although it passed the House 
of Lords, Lord St. Leonards alone dissenting, it was lost in 
the Commons through the opposition of Sir Uichard Bethell 



LIFE OP LORD LYNDHUEST. 183 

the Solicitor General, who was allowed to defeat a measure CHAP. 

YIII 
which the Chancellor himself had introduced, and on which ' 



Bridge- 
water case. 



the credit of the GoYernment materially depended. a.d. 1853. 

Although since Lyndhurst's last resignation he had de- 
clined to take any part in the judicial business of the House, 
there was one appeal this session of such great importance — 
estates of the value of 80,000?. a year being at stake, and 
the principles on which it was to be decided touching all the 
rights and duties of peers, — that he thought himself bound to 
assist in hearing and determining it. This was the great 
" Bridgewater case." 

The seventh Earl of Bridgewater by his will left his lands Hisjudg- 
in the counties of Salop and Chester in tail male to his gi-g^t 
nephew, Lord Alford, eldest son and heir apparent of the 
Earl of Brownlow, provided that if Lord Alford should die 
without having acquired the title and dignity of Duke or 
Marquis of Bridgewater, the lands should go over to other 
devisees, named in the will, as if Lord Alford had died with- 
out issue male. Lord Alford died leaving a son, without 
having acquired the title of Duke or Marquis of Bridgewater, 
and the question was whether this son should take the lands, 
or whether they should go over to the devisees who would have 
been entitled to them under the will if he had died without 
leaving a son ; and this depended upon the validity of the con- 
dition or proviso for cesser if the Crown should not confer upon 
Lord Alford the title of Duke or Marquis of Bridgewater.* 
On the part of these devisees it was argued that the condition 
was not tainted with illegality, for it could not be presumed 
that tlie Crown would create a peerage from any improper 
motive ; that the proviso must be taken to have been meant 
as an incentive to earn the peerage by eminent services to 
the State, and that it was to be considered in the same way 
as if the lands had been limited to go over if the first devisee 
did not obtain at the University of Cambridge the degree of 
Senior Wrangler. 

* The testator's great object was that, the existing title of Bridgewater 
bccomin<j: extinct, the Bridgewater estates and name should not be absorbed in 
the Earldom of Brownlow, and that a new title of Duke or MarquL, of Bridge- 
water should be created, to be borne by those who were to inherit the 
Bridgewater estates. 



184 KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

^SrfT' Of this opinion was Lord Cranworth, sitting as Vice 

'__ Chancellor ; and of this opinion were all the Judges except 

A.D. 1853. two, when consulted by the House of Lords. But Lord 
Lyndhurst thought that the son of Lord Alford was entitled 
to the estates, on the ground that this was an illegal condi- 
tion subsequent, and therefore utterly void, so that the will 
would operate as if no such condition were contained in it. 

" This," said he, " is not a technical question, but must be 
considered on general principles, with reference to the practical 
effect of the condition ; and we must bring our observation and 
experience to bear in determining it. It is a well-established 
rule of law, that a condition against the public good or public 
policy, as it is usually called, is illegal and void. Shepherd's 
Touchstone and Coke are direct authorities on this point. In 
more modern times, we find Lord Hardwicke stating that ' poli- 
tical arguments in the fullest sense of the word, as they concern 
the government of a nation, must be, and always have been, of 
great weight in the consideration of the Court; and though there 
may be no dolus mains in contracts as to other persons, yet if the 
rest of mankind are concerned as well as the parties, it may pro- 
perly be said that it regards the public utility. These reasons 
of public benefit and utility weigh greatly with me, and are a 
principal ingredient in my present opinion.' It is unnecessary to 
cite other authorities in support of this well-established rule of 
law. What cases come within the rule must be decided as they 
successively occur. Each case must be determined according to 
its own circumstances. When the case of a trustee dealing with 
his cestui que trust was first considered, it must, in the absence of 
precedent, have been determined upon weighing the public mis- 
chief that would arise from giving a sanction to such dealing. So 
as to transactions between attorneys and their clients; also as 
to seamen insuring their wages, and other similar cases referred 
to in the course of the argument. The inquir^^ must, in each 
instance where no former precedent occurred, have been into the 
tendency of the act to interfere with the general interest. The 
rule then is clear. Whether the particular case comes within 
the rule is the province of the Court in each instance, acting with 
due caution, to determine. My Lords, the duties incident to the 
peerage (and Lord Alford might at any moment, by the death of 
Lord Brownlow, have become a peer) are of the gravest and 
highest character, and in the proper discharge of whicli tho in- 
terests of the Crown and the public arc deeply- concerned. These 
duties are both legislative and judicial; in addition to which, a 



A.D. 1853. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUEST. 185 

peer of the realm lias a right, when he deems it necessary, to de- CHAP. 
mand an audience of the Sovereign, and to tender his advice 
respecting public affairs. In the framing of laws, it is his duty 
to act according to the deliberate result of his ju<3gment and 
conscience, uninfluenced, as far as possible, by other consider- 
ations, and least of all by those of a pecuniary nature. He acts 
judicially, not merely in the appellate jurisdiction of the House, 
but also in the various matters usually referred to Committees, in 
which the strictest independence is to be observed, and all foreign 
influence of every description to be carefully avoided. Such is 
the position, and such the duties, of a peer of the realm ; and it 
follows that any application or disposition of property, that has a 
tendency to interfere with the proper and faithful discharge of 
these duties, must be at variance with the public good, and con- 
sequently illegal and void. It is true that creations of peers and 
promotions in the peerage emanate from the Crown; and the 
respect we entertain for the Sovereign will not allow us to sup- 
pose that, in the exercise of this or any other prerogative, he can 
act otherwise than according to the best and purest motives. 
But we all know that, practically, this power is exercised accord- 
ing to the advice of the Minister — that the Crown rarely exer- 
cises it except at his suggestion, and on his recommendation ; 
and, further, that these honours are usually granted, except in 
cases of extraordinary merit or distinguished public services, to 
the partisans and supporters of the administration for the time 
being, and seldom to its opponents. This is obvious to all, and 
confirmed by every day's experience. What, then, would be the 
practical result of this state of things with reference to the proviso 
now under consideration? If an estate, in this case of great 
extent and value, is made to depend upon a creation or promotion 
in the peerage, is it reasonable to suppose — speaking generally 
(for we must so consider the subject), and without reference to 
particular individuals — that such a state of things would not 
have at least a tendency to lead the party thus interested to act, 
and without much inquiry, in accordance with those who could 
insure the permanence of the estate to his descendants, to induce 
him to support their views and measures, without any very 
scrutinising regard as to their effect or propriety, and thus to 
affect that free agency which it is a duty, as far as possible, 
to keep unimpaired ? That there may be exceptions — honour- 
able exceptions — to such an influence I do not mean to doubt. 
There may also be itidividuals who, from the dread of being sup- 
posed to be swayed by such motives, might adopt the opposite 
course, which would also be liable to objection. But, taking 



186 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

^Sj^F' uiankind as we find them, we could not, without wilfully closing 

'__ our eyes and discarding all the results of our observation and 

A.D 1853 experience, come to the conclusion that such a position would 
not have a tendency, and, in some cases at least, a strong tendency, 
to produce the result which I have stated, viz. : to fetter the free 
agency of the party in the performance of the important duties 
incident to his position as a member of the peerage ; and it fol- 
lows, I think, that a proviso or condition which has a tendency 
to produce such results must be at variance with the public good 
and general welfare. It is admitted that any contract or engage- 
ment having a tendency, however slight, to affect the adminis- 
tration of justice, is illegal and void. The character of the 
Judge, however upright and pure, does not vary the case. Ko 
less strong must be the principle where applied to the important 
duties of legislation and to those judicial duties of the peerage 
upon which so many and vast interests depend. In the decision 
already adverted to, as to the insurance of the wages of a seaman, 
the only principle upon which it proceeded was that such a 
practice, if permitted, would tend to relax his exertions for the 
safety of the ship, and thus affect the proper performance of his 
duty, in the faithful and active discharge of which the public 
interest is concerned; and so in other instances which have been 
mentioned, and to which it is not necessary more particularly to 
refer. Each case must, as I have already mentioned, be decided 
upon its own circumstances, as applied to the established rule of 
law regarding the public interest and welfare ; or, to use the 
words already quoted of Lord Hardwicke, ' upon political argu- 
ments in the fullest sense of the word, as they concern the 
government of a nation.' It is true, and cannot be disguised, 
that other motives, such as love of power, eagerness for office, 
&c., may, and undoubtedly do, more or less influence the conduct 
of men in the performance of these various and important duties. 
But if cases exist which are beyond the reach of the law, they 
afford no reason why, when a further influence is attempted to 
be created by an unusual disposition of property, and courts of 
justice are called upon to give effect to such disposition, they 
should not refuse to give it their sanction. The question then is, 
whether a proviso, such as we are considering, would have, if 
acted upon, a tendency to influence improperly the performance 
of those duties to Avhich I have referred. 1 think it would have 
such an influence, and I consider it, therefore, to be against the 
public good, and consequently illegal and void." 

Lord Brongliani, Lord Truro, ami Lord St. Leonards con- 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 187 

curred, and the decree was reversed, — Lord Cranwortli CHAP. 
retaining his former opinion. Not being able to attend ' 



during the argument, I took no part in the decision, but I a.d. 1853. 
cannot help thinking that those who pronounced it were 
legislating rather than administering the existing law. In 
this country the jDOwer of disposing of property by will is 
carried to a useless and mischievous length, and such a fan- 
tastical shifting of property on contingencies from one family 
to another, as the Earl of Bridgewater proposed, ought not 
to be permitted ; but I can see no illegality in the condition, 
and it would be vesting a very dangerous power in Courts 
of Justice if they were allowed to adjudge illegal and void 
all contracts and all dispositions of property by will which, as 
they fancy, are inexpedient and ought to be forbidden.* 

* Perhaps I cannot consider the question impartially, having given the 
same opinion when at the bar ia the lifetime of Lord Alford; but in this 
opinion Pemberton Leigh, now Lord Kingsdown, and several very eminent 
lawyers then considted, unanimously joined. 



188 



REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAPTER IX. 



1854 TO THE AUTUMN OF 1858. 



CHAP. 
IX. 

Session of 
1854. 



Russian 
War. 



He opposes 
my Foreij^n 
Intercourbc 
Bill. 



In the Session of 1854 Lyndhurst detached himself from 
the Derbyite party, who declined to express any opinion 
upon the policy of our protracted negotiation with Russia, 
till the result could be more distinctly known, and he reso- 
lutely urged the Aberdeen Government to act with more 
vigour and decision. Speaking of the papers which had been 
laid before the House relating to this subject, he said; — 
" They will be found to afford a lively picture of the shuffling, 
evasive, and (if I might apply such terms to persons in such 
exalted stations, I would say) truclding, and mendacious diplo- 
macy of the Court of St. PetersburgL" 

Ministers having declared that a change of territorial 
boundary should be no object of the war, he admonished 
them that the status quo would not content the nation. He 
said : — " It has become absolutely necessary that a change 
should take place at the mouth of the Danube — a cession 
of territory there is required for securing that most im- 
portant, and I may add necessary object, on which so much 
reliance is placed by Austria and Germany, — namely the 
free and uninterrupted navigation of this great river."* To 
this warning Europe may be indebted for the important 
cession of territory on the left bank of the Danube, whicli 
was insisted uj)on and obtained by the Peace of Paris in 
1856. 

In the course of this session I liad a little specimen of 
the incurable lubricity of my octogenarian friend, and his 
readiness to make any sacrifice of consistency for the purpose 
of gaining liis end, — whatever that end may be. He cared 



* laO Ilaiisnnl, 'Ml. 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHUKST. 189 

no longer about place or preferment, but be was now as eager CHAP, 
to gain applause or oratory, as be bad once been to secure ' 

tbe Great Seal. On account of a very foolisb address, carried a.d. i854. 
over by tbe Lord Mayor and mercbants of London to Louis 
Xapoleon, after tbe couf d'etat wbicb made bim Emperor, 
and a miscbievous, as well as ludicrous deputation of Quakers, 
wbo, under pretence of being peacemongers, went to pay 
bomage to tbe Emperor Nicbolas at St. Petersburgb, and 
to persuade bim tbat be migbt do wbat be liked witb Turkey, 
witbout any danger of Englisb interference, I laid a Bill on 
tbe table of tbe House of Lords, to probibit tbe subjects of 
tbis country from baving any intercourse witb foreign govern- 
ments on public affairs, unless witb tbe sanction of tbe Crown. 
I bad, as a precedent an Act of tbe American Congress, and 
for tbe princijple I bad tbe bigb autbority of Mr. Burke, in 
denouncing as treasonable tbe mission by Mr. Fox of Mr. 
Adair to tbe Empress Catberine, at tbe time of tbe Kussian 
armament. Lyndburst gave me to understand tbat be would 
warmly support me, and I make no doubt tbat be sincerely 
intended to do so. But a strong opposition to tbe Bill 
springing up from Lord Sbaftesbury, Lord Eoden, and otbers, 
wbo contended tbat it would prevent tbem from protecting 
converts to Protestantism in Koman Catbolic countries, " tbe 
old man eloquent " could not resist tbe temptation of gaining 
popularity by leading tbe attack. 

" Everybody knows," said be, " tbat my noble and learned 
friend himself is snob an avowed and unflinching advocate for 
freedom of discussion in religious matters, that there is no 
danger of his intentions being misinterpreted ; otherwise I have 
no doubt it would be supposed that the author of such a bill 
entertained some insidious design hostile to the religious liberty 
of the Eoman Catholics. Again, an act of injustice and cruelty 
has lately been committed by the Tuscan Government on two of 
its own subjects, found guilty of reading a translation of the 
Holy Gospels. Deputations from different Protestant States 
appeared at Florence for the purpose of remonstrating against 
this oppression; one deputation, headed by a noble Earl, a 
member of this House, distinguished for his strong Protestant 
feeling, joined in the pious effort" (Hear, hear). Lj-ndhurst 
continued, turning up his eyes to heaven, " Docs my noble 



190 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
IX. 



A.D. 1854. 



His resi- 
dence in 
France. 



November, 
1854. 



Lord Pal- 
merston 
Prime Mi- 
nister. 



Lyndliurst's 
speech 
against 
Prussia. 



and learned friend really mean to restrain acts of this sort, 
prompted loj a regard for onr Christian brethren, united to 
us by a common faith, and equally our brethren, although being 
under a foreign sky ? My noble and learned friend coldly pro- 
poses that such matters should be left to our diplomatic agents ; 
but the consequence would only be a correspondence extending 
through many pages of Blue Books, and barren of any beneficial 
result."* 

The bill, although read a second time, was ultimately lost, 
when Lyndhurst once more laughed, as he had been accustomed 
to do, at what he called the absurdities of Shaftesbury and 
Koden. 

For a great many years Lyndhurst had occupied a hired 
country-house at Turville, near Henley, in the county of Ox- 
ford, but — the lease having expired, and the landlord having 
refused to renew it, except for a long term of years, — this 
summer, after the prorogation, he made a tour in France, 
and he there received very marked attention from the Em- 
peror Louis Napoleon, — the third great foreign ruler with 
whom he had been very familiarly acquainted — the last of 
the three being destined to leave behind him a name as 
distinguished as that of Washington or Louis Philippe — 
although some parts of his career had given so iittle pro- 
mise. Lyndhurst used to contemn the exile living in a garret 
in London ; but now, dazzled by his success, or softened by 
his civilities, he had learned to speak of him with respect and 
with kindness. 

On his return to London, Lyndhurst summoned me to 
a conference in George street, and he expressed his im- 
patience to denounce the Aberdeen Government for their 
unskilful conduct of the war. Ere long a ministerial crisis 
was brought on by the sudden secession of Lord John 
Eussell, which was followed by the dissolution of Lord 
Aberdeen's Cabinet, and the promotion of Lord Palmerston 
to the Premiership. 

Lyndhurst took an active part in tlu^ i)arliamentary cam- 
paign which followed ; but he chiefly distinguished himself 
by a great speech (which ho published) against the crooked 



13:5 111 



irJ. 25, 



LIFE OF LOED LTNDHURST. 191 

policy of Prussia. Going back to the treacherous part played CHAP, 
by that state after the battle of Austerlitz, he showed how ' 

she abandoned her character of mediator, entered into an 20th March, 
alliance offensive and defensive with IN'apoleon, and accepted ^^^^' 
as a bribe for so doing the cession of Hanover — the iro me- 
morial family inheritance of the King of England, her ally. 
Said he : — 

" I well remember the stream of indignant eloquence poured 
forth on that occasion by Mr. Fox, so characteristic of his 
generous and noble spirit. The utter selfishness and vacillation 
of Prussia at that period, professing one thing and doing another, 
playing the game of fast and loose, corresponds in principle, is in 
accordance with the conduct which she has pursued throughout 
the whole of these recent negotiations. My Lords, I have no 
faith in the Prussian Government, and if my noble friend should 
be tempted to enter into any engagement with that Power 
I should be disposed to address him wdth words of caution — 
Hunc fu, Bomane, caveto." 

He concluded with sarcastic observations on Lord John 
Eussell, who, having become President of the Council and 
Colonial Secretary, was suddenly sent as our negotiator to 
Vienna : — 

" It requires but little of a prophetic spirit to foresee that he 
is destined at no distant period to occupy a still more elevated 
and commanding position in her Ma^jesty's councils. These 
things fill me with w^onder, and when I contrast the noble Lord's 
present situation and future brilliant prospects with his modest, 
retired, and anxious appearance a few weeks since, on the fourth 
row behind the Treasury bench, I almost insensibly murmur to 
myself a well known poetical description, — 

'Parva meta primo, mox sese attollit in auras, 
Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubila condit.' 

I rely on the sagacitj^ of the noble Lord, on his firmness, his 
vigour, his decision, and on the strong language which he held 
not long since in the other House of Parliament as a sure pledge 
tliat he will not consent to any terms of peace short of those 
which shall fully secure the great objects for which the war was 
undertaken." * 



* 137 Hansard, 871. 



192 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
IX. 



A.D. 1855. 

Lynd hurst 
champion 
of the Jews. 



Lyndhurst 
at Pea vis. 



A.D. 1856. 

The Wens- 
leydale life 
peerage. 



Howeyer, the prediction was not then destined to be 
fulfilled, and, soon after, the once popular Whig leader was 
forced to retire from office. 

At the conclusion of the session of 1855 Lyndhurst caused 
a great sensation by proclaiming, as the champion of the Jews, 
their camplete and immediate emancipation, and he cer- 
tainly exerted himself for the Israelites as sincerely as 
he could have done had he himself been a descendant of 
Abraham. 

His device (about which at the close of the session he 
confidentially consulted me) still was to bring in a bill 
to repeal or alter the Abjuration Oath,— the only obstacle 
to Jews sitting in Parliament, — to allow the words " on the 
true faith of a Christian " to stand in the bill as passed by 
the Lords, to have these words struck out in the 'Commons, 
and then to try to get a vote in the Lords agreeing to this 
amendment. 

But Lord Derby warned him of a commanding Conserva- 
tive majority, by which the bill would have been crushed 
upon a division, and it was withdrawn professedly on account 
of the lateness of the session. 

Upon the prorogation, Lyndhurst again went to France, 
and he remained in Paris till the beginning of the year 
1856, charming all classes there by his reckless conversation 
and his honhomie. 

He returned to London a few days before Parliament met, 
and I had various consultations with him on the foolish 
Government scheme of creating peers for life. He was 
delighted to be put forward as the leader of the opposition 
to it, in which 1 cordially joined. He now showed marvellous 
energy and talent. His speech on the 7th of February, 1856, 
on the Committee of Privileges, in support of the resolution, 
" that Baron Wensleydale, under the grant of a peerage to 
him for life, liad no right to sit in Parliament as a peer," was, 
I really believe, the most wonderful ever delivered in a deli- 
berative assembly. Serjeant Maynard spoke several times 
in the House of Commons when as old, but only briefly 
and dryly, in ai'guing points of law. Lyndhurst on this 
occasion, if a man of 35, would have excited unbounded 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHURST. 193 

astonisliment, by his retentive memory, liis deep research, CHAP, 
his powers of reasoning, and his strokes of sarcasm. Without _____ 
ever referring to a note, he went over all the instances of a.d. 1856. 
peerages for life — from that of Guiscard de 1' Angle, in the 
reign of Kichard II., to Lady Yarmouth's in the reign of 
George II. — showing that not one of them was a precedent for 
a peer for life, as such, sitting in Parliament ; he turned into 
ridicule Lord Coke's dictum that the grant of a peerage for 
life would be good, although for a term of years it would 
be bad, because it would go to executors ; he was very droll 
upon the grants of peerages for life to the royal mistresses, 
who had never claimed a right to sit in the House or to 
vote by proxy ; he even ventured, with an air of triumph, 
to rely on Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury, because this profli- 
gate statesman had thrown out something against life peerages, 
as a great legal authority, quoting Dry den's well-known 
lines, — 

" In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abetlidin 
With more discerning eyes, or liands more clean, 
Unbrib'd, unsought, the wretched to redress ; 
Swift of dispatch, and easy of access." 

Coming to constitutional considerations, he pointed out with 
irresistible force the fatal consequences of the attempted 
innovation, illustrating his argument with the contempt and 
insignificance into which Louis Philippe's Assembly of Peers 
for Life fell, followed by the extinction of freedom in France, 
and he bitterly reproached the Government for their ignorant 
precipitation in bringing forward such a revolutionizing mea- 
sure, admitted to be of doubtful legality, without ever con- 
sulting their Attorney or Solicitor General upon it, or even 
deliberately discussing it in the Cabinet. 

After the victory had been achieved by the rejection of Lord 
Wensleydale, Lyndhurst very properly gave notice of moving 
for a Select Committee, to consider the means of improving the 
appellate jurisdiction of the House, which had fallen into sad Appellate 
disrepute.* His proposal was that the Master of the Kolls and oftheLo'i°dl 

* It was notorious tliat Cranworth and St. Leonards, who often sat with- 
out a tliird law Lord, frequently differed, and sometimes left the decision to 
depend on the maxim prxsumltur pro necjante. If Brougham happened to bo 
present, he was occupied with various matters which interested him more than 
the appeal. 

VOL. VIIL O 



194 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOKIA. 



CHAP. 
IX. 



A.D. 1856. 



Lyndhurst 
cliamj)ion 
of tlie 
rij^hts of 
women. 



the Yice-Chancellors should be summoned to advise the House 
in equity appeals, as the Common Law Judges are summoned 
in writs of error from the courts of common law. But Lord 
Derby strangely and unfortunately took the subject out of 
his hands, delivered a very indiscreet harangue, in which, 
although sincerely desirous of retaining the appellate juris- 
diction in the House, he furnished many plausible topics to 
those who wished to deprive us of it. To the Committee 
then appointed I am much afraid will hereafter be justly 
attributed the permanent discredit of our appellate jurisdic- 
tion, which had been held in reverence for so many gene- 
rations. The bill which emanated from this Committee was 
concocted between Lord Derby and Lord Granville, to sanc- 
tion the appointment of a limited number of life peers for 
assisting in the judicial business of the House. Lyndhurst 
neither supported nor opposed this bill in its passage through 
the Lords, but he expressed great pleasure to me when it was 
rejected by the Commons, — not sparing what he described as 
" the presumption of Derby, for rashly meddling with matters 
which he ought to have left in more competent hands." 

During this session Lyndhurst made speeches which at- 
tracted considerable notice, on the future government of the 
Danubian provinces, as arranged by the treaty of Paris, and 
upon the oppression exercised b^ Austria and France over 
the once free states of Italy. 

But, the Kussian War being over, foreign affairs had lost 
much of their interest, and Lyndhurst thought that he should 
gain more distinction by devoting himself to social questions 
which were now agitating the public. So he proclaimed 
himself " Chamj)ion of the Eights of Women." To this course 
ho was impelled partly by the fascination of the accomplished, 
witty, and still beautiful Mrs. Norton, who had acquired no 
small literary fame by her poems, as well as by several 
pamphlets she had written on the wrongs of her sex. 

A bill was ponding in the House of Lords wliich originated 
from tlie ropoi't of a royal commission, over which I had 
the honour to preside, appointed to consider the subject of 
divorce. We had recomiiKMided that tlu^ law should remain 
as it had practically existed for near 200 years, — according 



LIFE OF LOED LTNDHUEST. 195 

to which a husband whose wife had been unfaithful to him, CHAP, 
without any fault on his part, could obtain a dissolution of ' 

the marriage, but the corresponding right was only given a.d, i856. 
to the wife if the husband had been unfaithful under circum- 
stances of aggravation which rendered it impossible that they 
should afterwards live together as man and wife. The pro- 
posed change was chiefly in the manner of obtaining the 
dissolution of the marriage, — viz., by the decree of a regularly 
constituted judicial tribunal, instead of an act of the legisla- 
ture, passed in each individual case, after an action at law for 
criminal conversation and a divorce a mensa et thoro in an 
ecclesiastical court. The first session in which the bill 
framed on this principle was introduced, Lynd hurst did not 
object to it, but now he denounced it as shamefully inadequate. 
In the first place, he denied that adultery was the only ground 
on which marriage ought to be dissolved, and he insisted that 
cruelty, desertion, conviction upon a charge of felony, and 
other causes which rendered cohabitation of husband and w^ife 
inexpedient, should be added. Then he contended that what- 
ever was good cause of divorce for the husband should equally 
be good cause of divorce for the wife, so that the two sexes 
should be placed on a footing of perfect equality. He next 
exposed very forcibly, and very truly, the injustice of the 
common law of England, which gives absolutely to the hus- 
band all the personal property of the wife, so as to enable him, 
after he has deserted her, to seize the earnings of her honest 
industry, that he may supply the extravagant wants of his 
mistress. But not contenting himself with providing the 
means of enabling the wife to obtain a judicial separation, 
and thenceforth protecting her property and her person 
against the husband, he proposed that the personal as well 
as the real property of the wife should always remain exclu- 
sively hers, and that, as far as property is concerned, husband 
and wife should always be two distinct persons, who may 
contract together, specially, how their property is to be en- 
joyed during the coverture, and in what proportion they shall 
respectively contribute to the maintenance of their household 
and the rearing of their common offspring. He likewise 
dwelt very pathetically, and with very sound reason, on the 

o 2 



196 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, reproacli to our jurisprudence caused bv the action for 
___2___ criminal conversation, and the monstrous hardship which this 
A.D. 1856. throws upon the wife, who, although innocent, cannot be 
heard in defence of her innocence. 

On Lyndhurst's motion, this bill was referred to a Select 
Committee, that he might there have . an opportunity of 
adding clauses to meet these multiplied grievances. The 
Committee sat several weeks, during which all these subjects 
were deliberately considered, and were ably treated by the 
venerable domestic Ees^enerator. He did not succeed in 
altering the principle upon which the dissolution of marriage 
was to rest, — the tremendous danger being pointed out of 
giving facihty of divorce, and the rule of allowing the dissolu- 
tion of the marriage only where cohabitation is no longer 
morally possible, being shown to apply very differently to 
the adultery of the wife and the adultery of the husband * 

Lyndhurst succeeded in making some useful additions 
to the bill, for which he was rapturously praised by the press, 
while we, who would not acknowledge the entire equality and 
homogeneity of the sexes, were scurrilously abused as " cruel 
tyrants/' and sometimes as " ignorant monks." The bill was 
so long delayed in the Committee, that it did not reach the 
Lower House in time to be considered there. 
Jew Bill In this Session Lyndhurst again strenuously advocated 

the Jew Bill ; but he made no converts, and it was again 
rejected by a large majority. He deejjly deplored the 
blindness ,of Lord Derby, who, he said, " for the sake of Disraeli, 
and the good of the Conservative party, should have dismissed 
his scruples about unchristianizing the Legislature, if he had 
any." 

* Afterwards, in a subsequent stage of the Bill, a right rev. Prelate, the 
Bishop of Salisbury, who holds that Scripture forbids the dissolution of mar- 
riage, even for the adultery of the wife, denied that our principle would load 
to divorce a vinculo ; for, said he, — " It is always the duty of the Chriistian 
husband to forgive, and he is bound to do so toiler quotics, and the more 
frequently and the more grievously the wife sins the more the husband is 
bound to forgive and ehcrLsh her, having taken her /or hit tr for icorse." 

I remember when I first came to London Kot'/cbue's play of the ' Stranger ' 
was very popular, and was thought to bo very demoralizing, on account of 
the hero liaving taken back to his l)osom his erring wife. But the Bishop 
of Salisbury would have applauded and i)ronouucod his blessing on the 
re-union. 



again re 
jected 



LIFE OF LOKD LYNDHUEST. 197 

I took leave of him in his house in Georo-e street, Hanover CHAP. 

. IX 

square, where I found him deeply engaged in studying the ' 



writings of St. Augustine, with a view to the next Session a.d. 1856. 
of Parliament, that he might be able to prove (contrary to Lyndhmst 
the assertion of the Bishop of Oxford) that this distinguished p^t]'iers^^^^ 
Father of the Latin Church does not consider marriage indis- 
soluble, and does not think that it is adultery to marry a 
divorced woman, if she was really divorced for adultery. He 
told me that he was going to spend the autumn at Dieppe, 
where a month later I heard he was assisting his great friend 
Baron Alderson to fly paper kites — and amusing himself, by 
turns, with the writings of the Greek and Latin Fathers on 
divorce and the amorous novels of Eugene Sue. 

During the short Session in 1857 which preceded the Session in 
abrupt dissolution of Parliament, Lyndhurst and I coalesced 1357! 
in lamenting the course taken by Lord Chancellor Cran worth, 
who again, without having consulted us, had introduced the 
two great annual measures, (1) " for the abolition of the eccle- 
siastical courts, and the establishment of a civil court of 
probate," and (2) " for regulating the law of divorce." These he 
introduced in a shape which needlessly excited opposition to 
them, as he proposed to make the will of every man who dies 
the subject of a suit in Chancery, and to give to all married 
people a power of voluntary divorce a mema et tJioro, when- 
ever they have a temporary quarrel, or grow tired of one 
another. I was extremely sorry to be obliged to show hos- 
tility to the Government, as I considered the country safer 
under Lord Palmerston than it could then be under any other 
minister ; but Lyndhurst, no longer with any view to office 
himself, and merely from a love of excitement, eagerly wished 
to bring about a change of government, and he had again 
allied himself with Lord Derby. Accordingly, wlien the Lyndhmst 
motion was brought forward about the rupture with China, ^?.*^^^ 

° ^ China quco- 

he delivered a very long and able speech in defence of Man- tion. 
darin Yeh and the Cantonese, and against the ministry at 
home, for supporting the aggressive proceedings of Sir John 
Bowring and Admiral Seymour. He distorted the facts con- 
siderably, and laid down a good deal of questionable law. I 
was strongly urged by Lord Granville to answer him; but 



198 



KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
IX. 



A.D. 1857. 



New Par- 
liament. 



I refused to interfere, as I was not quite master of all the 
complicated facts, and my law would certainly have been 
questioned. I therefore merely paired against the vote of 
censure, and went home. Next day I had the pleasure 
of twitting Lyndhurst with the majority of thirty-six against 
him, notwithstanding the liberties he had used with fact and 
with law. But he told me triumphantly that the result 
would be very different in the Commons, where the motion 
was to be made by Cobden, and was to be supported by all 
the Kadicals, by all the Conservatives, by all the Peelites, 
and by a pretty sprinkling of the Whigs. I called in George 
'street on Sunday, March 1st, to take leave of him previous 
to my departure on the Spring Circuit. He was in high 
glee. The China debate, after two adjournments, was still 
pending in the Commons, and several hot Tories came in, 
assuring him of victory, and ascribing the coming change of 
ministry mainly to his efforts. He told me there would have 
been no doubt as to the result, if the House had divided on 
Thursday or Friday, but that on Sunday, Hayter, the Whig 
whipper-in, had been very profuse of bribes and promises, 
and that a number of shabby fellows were afraid of losing 
their seats upon a dissolution. 

In spite of these bribes, promises, and fears, ministers were 
beaten, and a dissolution followed. But Lyndhurst was 
cruelly disappointed by finding that there was a general feel- 
ing in the country against his boasted coalition of Kadicals, 
Conservatives, Peelites, and disappointed Whigs, and that the 
result of the elections made Palmerston much stronger than 
ever. He was in hopes that the promised parliamentary reform 
might have caused a mutiny in the Liberal camp, but this mea- 
sure being by universal consent adjourned for a. year, the 
Government was safe for the session, and Lyndhurst only con- 
sidered how he could gain most edat by the exertion of his ora- 
torical powers. He had become feebler in his body, not being 
able to walk into the House without assistance from a friend, 
nor to stand witliout support from his staff; but his wonderful 
memory, and all his mental powers, remained in full vigour. 
Having brought IMrs, Norton to hear and applaud him, he 
was more enthusiastic and deterniinod in advocating tho 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUKST. 199 

rights of women. He now produced the fruit of his re- ^ ^?^^* 
searches in the writings of St. Augustine and the Fathers, ' 

Latin and Greek, and showed that, till Komish tyranny was a.d. i857. 
established, the absolute and perpetual indissolubility of mar- Lyndhuist 
riage was a doctrine unknown to the Church. Not contented °" (^i^^orce/ 
with the just interpretation of the texts in the Gospels which 
permit diyorce for adultery, he still insisted on the right to 
divorce for desertion, cruelty, and other causes which might 
render the continued cohabitation of a woman with her 
husband unhappy for her; and he bitterly inveighed against 
those who, tyrannising over the weaker sex, did not give 
them the same right which men arrogate to themselves of 
getting rid of an unworthy yoke-fellow. He paid, I believe, 
a just compliment to wdves, in saying that instead of seeking 
to take advantage of a casual infidelity of their husbands to 
avail themselves of theu' right to dissolve the marriage, they 
would be disposed to condonation : but he could not answ^er 
the objection that if the infidelity of the husband were consti- 
tuted a just cause of divorce, it would be made an instrument 
of fraud and collusion, and husbands and wives would often 
wish to change partners if this could be done without any of 
the parties concerned losing caste, or suffering materially in 
the estimation of the world. The result of this facility of 
divorce in moral Scotland, with which he tauntingly compli- 
mented me, affords no inference as to its result in England ; 
and we ought rather to look to Prussia, where in a moderately 
sized fashionable assembly, a married lady is almost sure to 
meet with two or three gentlemen to whom she has been 
before married, and where, if she feels a new change of her 
affections, she may, without scandal, make another trans- 
ference of her conjugal duties. 

Lyndhuist was now in hopes that he was about to earn Lyudhmst 
the permanent enjoyment of the title of " Liberator of the '^,^^^[" H^' 
Jews," conferred upon him when he passed the bill per- 
mitting Jews to hold all offices in municipal corporations. 
The bill for permitting them to sit in Parliament had 
passed the Commons by an immense majority, being sup- 
ported by Lord Derby's own son, by his Colonial Secretary Sir 
John Pakington, and by his leader in the House of Com- 



Jcw Bill 
without 
success. 



200 REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, mons, a Jew by birth and warmly attached to his race. 
___J_^__ There was a notion that Lord Derby himself from policy, if not 
A.D. 1857. from conviction, would be desirous to see the final settlement 
of a question which divided his adherents, and must greatly 
embarrass him if he should again have an opportunity of 
obtaining the premiership. But he was inflexibly obstinate, 
and, with one or two unimportant exceptions, all the Lords 
spiritual and temporal who had before voted against the 
Jews, after hearing an admirable speech from Lyndhurst in 
favour of toleration, voted against them once more, so that the 
legislature was not yet " unchristianized." 
His reckless Lyndhurst comforted himself with the high praise bestowed 
with respect upou him for a speech which he made in support of a motion 
of shedden ^^^' ^ sclect Committee of the House of Lords to inquire into 
V. Patrick, a caso of SJieddeii v. Patrieh, which the House had twice judi- 
cially determined. This is perhaps the most reckless proceed- 
ing with which Lyndhurst is to be reproached in his long 
career, and it shows most strikingly his inability to resist 
temptation, for he knew full well that he was doing what was 
wrong. 

The question was whether Shedden, who had been born in 
America, was entitled to an estate in Scotland; and this 
depended upon whether he was the legitimate son of his 
father. The Court of Session, more than fifty years ago, 
decided against him, and their decree was affirmed in the 
House of Lords in 1809, by the advice of Lords Eldon and 
Kedesdale. He brought another suit in the Court of 
Session, on the ground that the first had been fraudulently 
conducted by his guardian in collusion with his opponent. 
This was decided against him, and after a hearing which 
lasted a fortnight, the second decree was affirmed in the 
House of Lords by the advice of Lords Brougham, St. 
Leonards, and Cranworth. Still, after his opponent had been 
in possession of the estate under these decisions above half a 
century, he trumped up a romantic story of the discovery of 
a marriage between his father and his mother before his 
birth, and petitioned the House of Lords that a select com- 
mittee might be appointed to consider his claim. Lyndhui-st 



LIFE OF LORD LYNDHURST. 201 

privately admitted to me that the House could not with pro- CHAP, 
priety interfere, and declared publicly that the decisions were ' 

right and could not now be reversed ; yet, seduced by the a.d. i857. 
pleasure of narrating this "romance of real life," which he pre- 
tended to believe, he made a brilliant and affecting speech 
nearly two hours long, disclosing the misfortunes and griev- 
ances of his hero, and insisting that, if the estate was irre- 
coverably gone, there should be an inquiry into his case, and 
his legitimacy should be proclaimed to the world along with the 
fraudulent conduct of his oppressors. This speech made such 
an impression that, when I rose to answer it, I had not the 
slightest doubt that he would now succeed in obtaining a com- 
mittee as he had done for the Baron de Bode, who had as little 
title to the interference of the House. But to my surprise, 
and, I believe to Lord Lyndhurst's satisfaction (for, the speech 
being made, he was wholly indifferent whether poor Shedden 
v.as to be regarded as legitimate or a bastard) the motion 
was negatived by a small majority. 

Having observed from several trials before me the frightful Obscene 
extent to which the circulation of obscene books and prints tious Bill, 
was carried, and the insufficiency of the remedy by indictment 
against the publishers, I had introduced a bill giving a power 
to search for, carry away, and destroy such abominations, 
under a warrant to be obtained from a magistrate. For 
some unaccountable reason, Lyndhurst violently opposed 
this measure, and on the second reading he delivered a 
most elaborate, witty, unfair, and, I must add, profligate 
speech against the bill, and moved that it be read a second 
time that day three months. His motion was rejected, and 
on the third reading we had such a rough passage of arms 
that the entente cordiale which had subsisted between us for 
nearly ten years was for a while suspended, and diplomatic 
relations were not restored between my noble and learned 
friend and myself till the beginning of the following year. 

He did not appear at the short meeting of Parliament 
which took place in the end of the year 1857, to indemnify 
the Government for having authorised an issue of notes by 
the Bank of England beyond what they were justified in 



202 



REIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
IX. 



A.D. 1858. 



Palmer- 
ston's ap- 
proaching 
tall. 



Conse- 
quences of 
the plot t( 
assassinate 
Louis 
Napoleon. 



doing under Peel's Act, in relation to the gold bullion 
in their coffers. Palmerston at this time appeared to be 
stronger than any English minister since the time of the 
younger Pitt, and Lyndhurst despaired of further political 
excitement from ministerial changes. 

But before Parliament again met, there were visible 
symptoms of an approaching convulsion. Palmerston's head 
appeared to be turned by his elevation. He became careless 
about the opinion of his colleagues, or of his supporters 
in the House of Commons, or of the public, and gave 
great offence to many of his well-wishers. Nevertheless, 
he would have weathered another session but for the 
manner in which he met the crisis caused by the attempt 
to assassinate the Emperor Louis Napoleon. Orsini and the 
other conspirators had hatched their plot in England, 
and here had manufactured the hand grenades by which 
their object was to be executed. The cry arose in France 
that the English harboured and encouraged the conspirators ; 
and the French Government, by the speeches of its func- 
tionaries, and by a diplomatic despatch, very improperly 
called upon us immediately to alter our laws with respect 
to aliens resident in the United Kingdom. The right 
answer clearly would have been, that aliens resident in the 
United Kingdom were bound by the same laws as native- 
born subjects, so as to be liable to punishment if they con- 
spired to disturb the tranquillity of a foreign state in amity 
with her Majesty, or to assassinate any one, of whatever 
degree, living abroad ; that we were still resolved to afford 
an asylum to all political exiles while they conducted them- 
selves peaceably among us, and that, being satisfied with 
our laws, and no others having just cause to complain of 
them, we must decline the invitation to alter them. Unfor- 
tunately, without returning any written answer, the Govern- 
ment resolved to bring in a Bill to amend the law respecting 
conspiracies by foreigners, and to make the punishment of a 
conspiracy to murder the same in all parts of the United 
Kingdom. Hearing a rumour of this intention, and highly 
disappro\ ing of it, a few days before Parliament was to reas- 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 203 

semble I wrote a note to Lyndhurst, announcing my intention CHAP. 
to put a question to the Government upon it in the House of ' 



Lords unless he would, and strongly urging him to do so. a.d. 1858. 
The same day he called at Stratheden House when I was not Diplomatic 
at home, and, along with his card, left a very civil answer to Ji^JfJ^^Td 
my note, saying that he entirely agreed with me respecting between 
the course which our Government ought to adopt, but that hm-staud 
Lord Derby himself meant to mention the subject the first Campbell. 
night that the House sat. 

Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, learning at Brookes's 
what I contemplated, called upon me and assured me that the 
Government had no intention to ask for power to send aliens 
out of the country, and that Lord Derby had undertaken to 
support the alteration of the law which was to be proposed. 
I took the earliest opportunity in debate to lay down the law Law as to 
as it actually stands, and to express my strong opinion that it jng in 
required no alteration. Lyndhurst concurred. The Bill, how- ^i^^g^and. 
ever, passed the Lords, and if it had not been demanded by the 
French Government, it would have been harmless enough. 
But it was strongly opposed in the Commons, and, to 
smooth its way there, the Attorney General misrepresented 
the existing state of the law, saying that acts offensive to 
foreign governments might be done with impunity by aliens 
residing in England, although the same acts would be 
punishable if done by native-born British subjects. Next 
evening Lyndhurst, without any previous concert with me, 
asked me in his place if my attention had been directed 
to the law alleged to have been laid down " elsewhere " by 
her Majesty's Attorney General, and if I approved of it. I 
then, " in defence of our jurisprudence, and to'quiet the alarm 
which might be excited among neighbouring nations," 
denounced the law imputed to Mr. Attorney as erroneous, 
and explained how aliens resident here owe a temporary alle- 
giance to the Crown of England, and are liable to be prose- 
cuted and punished for any acts in violation of the law of 
England done by them in this country, in the same manner 
as if they had been born within the sound of Bow bell. 
Lyndhurst and all the law lords seriatim expressed their con- 



204 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
IX. 



A.D. 185^ 



Final eman- 
cipation of 
the Jews. 



currence. Nevertheless, Mr. Attorney renewed the attack in 
the Commons, asserting that this scene in the Lords had 
been got up by concert between the venerable ex-Chancellor 
and the Lord Chief Justice. 

Without giving me any notice of his intention, Lyndhurst 
soon after made a violent speech against a bill I introduced 
according to the recommendation of a select committee, to 
legalise reports of the proceedings of the two Houses of Par- 
ment and of discussions at public meetings on subjects in 
which the public have an interest. He professed a wish 
that the bill might be read a second time, "in the hope 
that it might be amended in committee ; " but he most 
unfairly misrepresented the mode in which it would operate 
if passed as it was originally drawn, and, having concluded 
his speech in the midst of "cheers and laughter," he im- 
mediately left the House, that I might not retaliate upon 
him in my reply. 

However, we cordially co-operated in the emancipation of 
the Jews, which in a strange manner was this session finally 
and unexpectedly accomplished. According to his early 
liberal creed he was rather disposed to be on their side, but a 
slight hope of advantage to his position or his fame from 
taking the other side woukl have brouglit from him a seem- 
ingly earnest representation of the terrible dangers to be 
produced by " unchristianizing the Legislature." When the 
bill for reforming the University of Cambridge was lately 
before Parhament, as High Steward of that corporation still 
devoted to exclusiveness, he had as zealously combated all con- 
cession to the Dissenters as when he first fought under Lord 
Castlereagh. But he had no private motive for opposing the 
Israelitish cause, and he easily discovered that there would be 
much more distinction in beins; the leader in the House of Lords 
of the advocates for religious liberty, than in phxying a subordi- 
nate part under Lord Derby, who seemed determined at all 
hazards to secure to himself the title of "the last of the 
bigots." I liad incurred considerable obloquy with extreme 
and foolish Liberals by denouncing Lord John Ivussell's 
scheme for introducing Jews into the House of Commons 
by Resolution, but I had always sought to gain this object 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUEST. 205 

by constitutional means. Soon after the commencement of CHAP. 

. . Ia.. 

the session I had a consultation with Lyndhurst as to the ' 

course now to be pursued ; and acknowledging him as my a.d. i858. 

chief, I advised that we should originate nothing in the 

Lords, but wait till the annual Jew Bill should come up 

from the Commons, when we should do our best to support 

it. He showed a great desire to reintroduce his " Oaths 

Bill," but he agreed to allow the contest to take place as I 

suggested. 

When the Bill, introduced into the Commons by Lord 
John Kussell, reached us, we were in great spirits, being told 
that the Government intended to support the second reading ; 
and as three of Lord Derby's cabinet (including his own son) 
had voted for it, the general expectation was that, yielding 
to public opinion, and extricating his party from a great em- 
barrassment, he now intended to let it pass. 

When the second reading came on, Lyndhurst once more 
delivered an excellent speech in support of religious liberty — 
unnecessarily shocking some more temperate friends of the 
cause by professing his readiness to admit into Parliament 
Mahometans and Deists, if they were good citizens. But 
Lord Derby, although he consented to the Bill passing this 
stage without a division, expressed a firm determination hi 
Committee to strike out the clause which admitted Jews 
to take the new oath without saying, " on the true faith of 
a Christian." In the Committee, Lord Chelmsford, the 
Chancellor, after an uncompromising speech against the Jews, 
moved to omit the obnoxious clause, and the motion was 
carried by an immense majority. We thought that the 
theme would be heard of no more during this Session, unless 
the coup d'etat should be again attempted in the Commons of 
proceeding by Kesolution. But, when the bill came back 
from the Commons with their reasons for insisting upon the 
negatived clause, Lord Lucan gave notice of a bill to autho- 
rise either House jof Parliament to admit Jews by Eesolutiou, 
and Lord Derby expressed his willingness to agree to what 
he called a comjyromise on this principle. Lyndhurst was 
much hurt by the notion of a cavalry officer carrying off the 
glory of being " Liberator of the Jews," and on the same 



A.D. 1858. 



206 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP, evening that Lord Liican's bill was produced, laid on tlie 
' table a new bill of his own as a substitute for the Commons' 
bill — introducing into it an enabling clause, which would 
have extended to all who disbelieve the Christian religion. 
Both bills stood for a second reading the same evening. 
Lord Derby declaring that he preferred Lord Lucan's bill, 
Lyndhurst, with a mortified air, Avithdrew his own, but still 
made a good fight in exposing the course which Lord 
Derby was pursuing, — viz., with Lord Lucan's Bill, to send 
back to the Commons the Oaths Bill — to insist on striking 
out from it the clause in favour of the Jews, and to assign to 
them as a reason for this, that it would be impious to admit 
a Jew to sit in a Christian assembly. At Lyndhurst's instiga- 
tion I several times pointed out the incongruity and absurdity 
of this proceeding, which was as much as to say to the Com- 
mons, " We know that we should be damned if we agreed to 
admit a Jew to sit among us, but we give you authority 
to allow Jews to sit among you, and if you please you may 
do so, and be damned to you." 

In a few days after. Baron Eothschild duly took his seat 
as one of the representatives for the City of London, and the 
object for which Lyndhurst had stniggled was gained ; but 
he was sadly mortified that the glory of the victory was 
divided between Lord John Kussell and Lord Lucan. I had 
the satisfaction of telling him that he had been exceedingly 
ill-used by Lord Derby, and that, leaving the Tory ranks for 
ever, he ought again to be a Liberal in omnibus. 

He went to the House of Lords on the day of the Proroga- 
tion, to hear in what terms Jewish emancipation, the most 
important event of the Session, would be noticed in the Royal 
speech. To his great disgust it was not even alluded to; 
while her Majesty was made to rejoice in the benefits 
to be derived by her subjects, from the Bill for uniting 
King's College and Mareschal College in the University of 
Aberdeen. • 



Heaven knows whether Lyndhurst and I shall both survive, 
80 as that I may narrate his career in the year 1859 ; and, if 



LIFE OF LOKD LTNDHUEST. 207 

we do, Heaven only knows what party he may tlien belong CHAP, 
to, and wliat opinions he may then profess. Meanwhile ' 



I must conclude this Memoir. The extraordinary man who a.d. 1858. 
is the subject of it may live to do and to say things as 
remarkable as any I have related of him ; but lest my own 
career should be suddenly closed, and I should not be able to 
make an examination of his character after his. death, I add 
a few comments, as if he belonged entirely to the past. 

I do not think that those who have known him thoroughly Character 
will say that I have treated him unjustly or harshly. Having Lyndhurst. 
passed so many merry hours in his company, I bear him only 
good wdll, and I am ever pleased when, with a safe conscience, 
I can write anything in his praise. But truth would be vio- 
lated, and pernicious consequences would follow from his 
example, if his errors were not pointed out — if it were con- 
sidered that brilliant qualities may supply the place of sound 
principles, and that a man utterly disregarding the means by 
which he seeks advancement, may calculate on enjoying, 
along with splendid success in public life, the esteera and 
respect of his contemporaries and of posterity. 

I am bound, therefore, sternly to pronounce, that although 
Lyndhurst had opinions, inclinations, and propensities which 
were generally right, so that he was not indifferent to human 
happiness, — and still less could he be justly compared (as he 
sometimes was) to an evil spirit who delights in mischief, — 
yet, from his entrance into public life, he has shown himself 
to be devoid of public principle, and to be actuated too 
often by a sense of interest. He has been consciously con- 
tented with " a wounded name," the only limit to his aberra- 
tion from rectitude being that he should not lose his social 
position, trusting to dexterity and good luck to escape 
the perils he encountered, and occasionally venturing on 
the very brink of destruction. He justly placed great 
reliance on his manners, which were most agreeable, and 
which often saved him ; for they were accepted as a sub- 
stitute for virtue. His chief resource was recklessness in 
conversation. He used unmeasured freedoms with himself, 

V 



208 KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP, as well as his colleagues and opponents, and, representing 
'__ his own character to be worse than it really was, he often 



A.D. 1858. induced a belief that all that himself and others said against 
him must be taken as mere mystification and badinage. But 
the painful recollection recurs that he was a professed Jacobin, 
while he thought there might be a revolution in this country, 
after the fashion of France ; that he suddenly became the 
tool of an arbitrary government, and zealously assisted in 
undermining our free institutions ; that within one short year 
he ardently opposed, and as ardently supported Catholic 
emancipation, first that he might mount, and then that he 
might remain upon, the woolsack ; and that he was Protec- 
tionist, Free-trader, and Protectionist again, merely as it 
suited his convenience. 

He must have had many uneasy moments, notwithstanding 
the gay looks which he always assumed ; and surely it would 
have been more for his happiness to have preserved his self- 
esteem, even if he had never risen higher than a puisne judge 
or a well-employed barrister. I make no doubt that a more 
splendid eminence than he ever attained was actually within 
his reach, if he had always kept in the path of honour and 
consistency. At one time there v;as a scheme seriously en- 
tertained of making him leader of the Conservatives in the 
House of Commons, with a view to his succeeding Lord 
Liverpool as Prime Minister ; but from want of confidence 
in his character it was soon abandoned. While he held the 
Great Seal he might have enjoyed the power and influence 
of Lord Hardwicke under the Pelhams ; but he was distrusted 
by Sir Kobert Peel, and he was obliged to obey tlie orders he 
received from liis chief, as if he had been a junior Lord of the 
Admiralty. 

His abilities certainly were of the highest order. For 
the genus demonstrativum dicendi lie was by far the 'best per- 
fonner I have known in my time, yet he had not much fancy, 
and he never rose to impassioned eloquence. Along with a 
most vigorous understanding, he was gifted with a wonderful 
memory, which has remained unimpaired down to the present 
time. 
• I never heard of his being engaged in any literary under- 



f LIFE OF LOED LTNDHURST. 209 

taking, except writing some letters in ' The Times ' newspaper CHAP, 
along with Benjamin Disraeli, under the signature of * Eunny- ' 



mede/ He was fond in his speeches of introducing quota- a.d. 1858. 
tions, but they were supplied by his early reading, and some 
favourite ones (as Burke's on * American Taxation,' touching 
the happy effects of a conciliatory policy) had often received 
the meed of Parliamentary approbation. 

He might have risen to celebrity as a " diner-out." With- 
out being epigrammatic or positively witty, his talk was always 
sparkling and always pleasing. He possessed to a high degree 
the invaluable art of making those with whom he conversed 
dearer to themselves. He never condescended to anything 
like direct flattery ; but he felicitously hit upon the topic 
which he knew would tickle the amour propre of those whom 
he wished to dulcify. His grand resource was to abuse or to 
ridicule the absent. He relied, with undoubting faith, upon 
tlie implied confidence among gentlemen, that conversational 
sallies are sacred, and he would, without scruple or apprehen- 
sion, say things which if repeated must immediately bring- 
about a quarrel if not a duel. He was accustomed, when 
conversing with political opponents, to abuse and laugh at 
his own colleagues and associates, and above all to abuse and 
laugh at the rivals of those whom he was addressing. Yet 
such was his tact, that I never knew him brought into any 
scrape by this lingual licence. 

In his person he was tall, erect, and gracefully proper- His person. 
tioned. His features were strongly marked, and his whole 
countenance well-chiselled — with some fine lines of thought 
in it — nevertheless, occasionally with a sinister smile of great 
cunning, and some malignity, which obtained for him the 
sobriquet of Mephistophiles. The best portrait of him is by 
Shee, the President of the Koyal Academy, among the Judges 
in Serjeant's Inn Hall. 

He used to affect to be a roue, and after he was married he His happi- 
would say, what a charming thing it was to visit Paris en domestic 
gargon ; but he has long laid aside such puerilities, and ho ^'^'^• 
has affectionately lived with the present Lady Lyndhurst 
in a state of uninterrupted harmony. To his great mortifica- 
tion he has no son to inherit his title. If the peerage had 

VOL. VIII. P 



• 



210 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, been transmitted, it would have been poorly endowed ; for 
' although now relieved from pecuniary embarrassment, he is 

A.D. 1858. only able to live comfortably on his retired allowance as 
ex- Chancellor, and to make a decent provision for his daugh- 
ters. But he has always given away money very liberally in 
charity, and has behaved very kindly to all his relations, both 
in Eno-land and in America. 



Postscript by the Editor. 

This Memoir is carried down to the month of August, 1858. 

My father might have continued the narrative through 

nearly three years more before his own life was suddenly 

closed, but having meanwhile become Lord Chancellor, he 

lost the scanty leisure that he had previously devoted to 

biographical labours, and no further entry was made. 

A.D. 1859. Little, however, remained for him to record. In the year 

July 5. 1859 Lord Lyndhurst made but one great speech, that on 

National Defences, when he roused himself to all his former 

energy ; but my father would doubtless have also gratefully 

mentioned how gallantly the ex-Chancellor came to his 

defence when' he was much abused for a judicial appointment 

which he had recently made. 

July 1. The following is Lord Lyndhurst's characteristic speech : — 

"My Lords, I wish to call your Lordships' attention to a 
recent appointment to the judicial bench — the appointment of 
Mr. Blackburn to a puisne judgeship in the Court of Queen's 
Bench. I have been asked, Who is Mr. Blackburn? And a 
journal which takes us all to task by turns has asked, somewhat 
indignantly, ' AVho is Mr. Blackburn? who is Mr. Blackbin*n?' 
I take leave to answer that he is a very learucd person, a very 
sound lawyer, an admirable arguer of a law case, and from his 
general acquirements eminentl}^ fitted for a seat on the bench. 
These appointments are exclusively in the hands of the Lord 
Chancellor ; ho is solcl}^ responsible for them, but of this I am 
sure that if the distinguished Judge who now presides in the 
Queen's Bench, — a Judge remarkable for his knowledge of law, 
and for the admirable manner in which ho applies it, — had been 



A D, 1859. 



A.D. 1860. 



LIFE OF LOED LYNDHUKST. 211 

consulted, he would have cordially concurred in the judgment of CHAP, 
my noble and learned friend on the woolsack. I owe this 
explanation to the learned Judge, Mr. Justice Blackburn, and I 
owe it also to my noble and learned friend, though I know he 
can always take good care of himself. I am one of those who 
think it of great importance that the public should not entertain 
any doubt or any jealousy with respect to appointments to the 
judicial bench. I hope my noble and learned friend will allow 
me to take this opportunity of congratulating him on his eleva- 
tion — on his having attained everything that he has ever looked 
forward to. We may say of him, in the words of the poet — 

' Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis, all 
As the weird women promised/ 

AVithout being a countryman of my noble and learned friend, I 
may take credit to myself for a species of foresight, having on a 
former occasion predicted the advancement of my noble and 
learned friend." 

In the following year (1860) his strength seemed rather to 
increase than to diminish. On the 1st of May he spoke for 
nearly an hour on the subject of the Naval Keserve, and on 
the 21st of May, the day on which he completed his 88th 
year, he poured forth eloquent strains on the danger of 
repealing the Paper Duty. 

The last time he came to Stratheden House was on the 
20th June, when he joined a dinner-party at which my father 
had gathered together the greatest lawyers of the day. 
Lord Lyndhurst was too infirm to walk upstairs ; but going 
straight into the dining-room the rest of the company joined 
him there, and he delighted them all with his wit and good 
humour. One of those who were present on that occasion 
writes thus of it, more than eight years afterwards : — " It was 
a very remarkable party, from the distinction and age of 
many of those present, and the vivacity and interest of the 
conversation. I remember well that Lord Lyndhurst was 
unusually lively and agreeable. That which dwells on my 
memory is his leave-taking. He rose to leave the room 
before tlie rest of tlie party — but all the rest rose too — and 
there was something like a cheer from the others as he went 
out. I thought that the old man was fatigued and was 
retiring early, but it turned out he was going on to a party 

p 2 



212 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, at Apsley House. The scene and tlie events of the evening 
' generally made a strong impression on me, even before they 

A.D. I860, received an additional although sad interest by subsequent 
events. There was something almost affecting in the defer- 
ence and respect, as to one entitled to the reverence due to 
age, paid by men like Lord Campbell, Lord Wensleydale, 
and Lord Cran worth — all of whom were far advanced in life. 
I wish I could paint the scene as vividly as it impressed 
me." * 

A.D. 1861. In the Session of 1861, Lord Lyndhurst again aj)peared in 
th^ House of Lords, and on the 7th of May spoke on the law 
of domicile at considerable length, and with much of his 
wonted brilliancy and vigour. But this was his last speech. 
His name does not appear in the debates again. 

A.D. 1863. He Kved for two years longer, seeing his friends and re- 
taining his cheerfulness and composure. But his public life 
was over, and his strength gradually decaying he breathed 
his last on the 13th of October, 1863, in the 92nd year of his 
age. 

* Letter from the Eight Honourable James Moncreiff (then Lord Advocate). 
Amongst my father's papers I find a memorandum showing that he intended 
to give an account of this dinner, as well as of Lord Lyndhurst's speech of 
the 1st of July, 1859, quoted in the preceding pages. 



LOED CHANCELLOK BEOUGHAM. 



CHAPTEE I. 

HIS EAELY LIFE IN SCOTLAND, 1778-1805. 



Having lived familiarly with tlie subject of this Memoir for CHAP, 
more than forty years, and having had ample opportunities ' 



of observing all his merits and defects, I may be supposed to Quaiifica- 
be peculiarlv well qualified to be his biosfrapher.* On the ^}^^^ ^^^ 

i. J i^ . disqualihca- 

other hand, as we have often been in collision, and as keen tions of the 
rivalry has produced private as well as public quarrels betwixt to^S this 
us, I must have misgivings with respect to my impartiality, Memoir. 
and the reader may reasonably regard my narrative with 
suspicion. I am quieted, however, by the consideration that 
we are now on a friendly footing, and that, from our respec- 
tive positions, nothing is likely to occur which can again 
embroil us. I am sure that I entertain no resentment against 
him for past injuries, and while mindful of kindness occa- 
sionally received from him, I trust that I am not in danger of 
proving too encomiastic, from the dread of being suspected 
of an inclination to disparage or to censure him. 

The chief difficulty to be encountered in this undertaking 
is to determine the scale upon which the *Life of Lord 
Brougham' is to be composed. Volumes to load many 
camels might be filled with detailed accounts of all the 
doings, writings, and speeches, by which he has excited 
the passing interest of his contemporaries. If these were 
read posterity might consider him a myth, like the Grecian 
Hercules, to whom the exaggerated exploits of many different 

* This memoir wns begun in April, 1853, when the author had for two 
years been Lord Cliief Justice of EngUind. — Ed. 



214 EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP, individuals are ascribed. But notwithstanding the very large 
' space which, while living, he has occupied in the public eye, 
a considerate man may doubt whether his permanent fame 
will be great in proportion. By seeking distinction in almost 
every department of genius, he has failed to estabhsh a great 
name in any. He accomplished nothing as a statesman ; he 
cannot be said to have extended the bounds of human know- 
ledge by philosophical discovery ; his writings, although dis- 
playing marvellous fertility, are already falling into neglect ; 
his speeches, which when delivered nearly set the world on 
fire, when perused in print cause disappointment and weari- 
ness ; and he must chiefly be remembered by the professional 
and party struggles in which he was engaged, and by the 
juridical improvements which he assisted to introduce. The 
narrative of his biographer ought to be proportioned to 
the curiosity respecting him which is likely to be felt in 
after times. Let me crave indulgence proportioned to the 
difficulty of the task. 

I should much displease Lord Brougham if I did not begin 
with some account of his descent. He was very desirous 
of being considered a distinguished statesman, philosopher, 
orator, fine wTiter, and lawyer, but much more desirous of 
being believed to be "Brougham of that ilk," — the repre- 
sentative of a great family, who derived their name from the 
name of the landed estate of which they had immemorially 
been in possession. His weakness upon this point was almost 
incredible, and I am afraid to repeat wdiat I have heard him 
gravely state respecting the antiquity and splendour of his 
race. He asserts that Broacum, in the Itinerary of Anto- 
ninus, is the identical spot which he calls Broitf/ham, and 
where he now lives, that it was the property of his ancestors 
when this ancient Handbook for Koman travellers was com- 
piled ; and that there they have lived in splendour ever since, 
except when campaigning in Palestine against the Saracens. 
He has told me that "Jockey of Norfolk," the democratic 
and proud Duke who flourished in the reign of George III., 
used to say when he came to the North of England, " You 
talk of your Percys and Greys in this country, but the only 
true gentleman among you is Mr. Brougham of Brougham. 



*' Brougham 
of that ilk." 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 215 

We Howards have sprung up only recently ; but the CHAP. 
Broughams were at Brougham in the time of Antoninus. ______ 

They distinguished themselves in the Holy Wars, and in 
some of the most important events of early English History." 

Lord Brougham was likewise in the habit of insisting that 
he was entitled to the Barony in fee of Yaux, or de Yaulx, 
as heir-general of Kanulph de Yaulx, and William de Yaulx, 
who were summoned to sit in Parliament in the reign of 
Henry II. Nay, he has gone so far as to say in my hearing, 
that this barony formerly gave him great uneasiness, as he 
was afraid that, at the death of an old lady, who stood before 
him in the pedigree, it would devolve upon him, and dis- 
qualify him for practising at the Bar or sitting in the House 
of Commons. He alleged that it had come into his family by 
an ancestor of his having married the heiress of the de Yaulxes 
of Tremayne and Caterlin. The pedigree of the Chancellor 
in the popular peerages, of which he must be aware, takes no 
notice of the de Yaulxes, but represents that his ancestors were 
seated at Brougham in the time of Edward the Confessor, 
and that "John Brougham, of Scales Hall, came into pos- 
session of the ancient family demesne in the beginning of the 
last century." Let us come to History from Komance. 

There certainly is a parish and manor called Brougham or 
Burgham, near Penrith, in the county of Westmorland, and, 
for anything I know, this may be the Broacum of Antoninus. 
Here, but at a distance from the Brougham of Lord Brougham, 
there stood in very ancient times, and still stands in ruins, a 
magnificent Norman castle, frowning over the Kiver Eamont, 
with machicolated gateway, donjon, and towers, called 
Brougham Castle, the undoubted residence of the knightly 
family of Brougham or de Burgham. Walter de Burgham 
flourished here in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and 
his descendant, Odoard de Burgham, was heavily fined by 
Henry II. for having surrendered it, with Appleby Castle, 
to the Scots. In subsequent reigns the De Burghams reco- 
vered their reputation by fighting valiantly for the Cross of 
Christ in the Holy Land ; and one of these gallant crusaders 
reposed in the parish church of Brougham with his effigy 



216 EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP, on his tombstoDe, representing him in full armour, and a 
' greyhomid at his feet. 

But in the fourteenth century the Lord of the Manor and 
Castle of Brougham died without male issue, leaving three 
daughters. Thenceforth Brougham Castle has been entirely 
dissevered from the name of Brougham, as in the division of 
the property among the co-heiresses it fell to the portion of 
the eldest, and by marriage came to the de Cliffords, Earls 
of Cumberland. Here Francis, Earl of Cumberland, enter- 
tained James I., in the year 1617. Afterwards the castle was 
inherited by the famous Anne, Countess of Pembroke, who 
repaired it, and placed the following inscription in capital 
letters over the principal gate : — 

" This Brougham Castle was repaired by the Ladie Anne Clif- 
ford, Coimtesse Dowager of Pembroke, Dorsett, and Montgomery, 
Baronesse Clifford, Westmerland, and Vescie, Lady of the Honour 
of Skipton in Craven, and High Sheriffesse by inheritance of the 
countie of "Westmerland in the years 1651 and 1652, after it had 
layen ruinous ever since August, 1617, when King James lay in 
it for a time in his journie out of Skotland towards London, until 
this time. 

Isa, Chap. 58 Verse 12 
God's name be praised." 

As sheriffess, carrying her white wand, and attended by 
her javelin men, she here received the Judges of Assize, and 
conducted them to Appleby Castle, where their successors 
continued to be lodged and splendidly entertained by the 
hereditary sheriffs of Westmorland, till the death of the last 
Earl of Thanet a few years ago, when the office was abolished 
by Act of Parliament. Brougham Castle is now the property 
of Sir Eichard Tufton, his natural son and devisee. 

Another of tlie co-heiresses of the last "Brougham of 
Brougham Castle" was married to a collateral rehxtion of the 
same name, and in their descendants one-tliird of the property 
remained till the fifth year of James I., when the last male of 
the old family of Brougham died without issue. A family 
of the name of Bird, who had inherited a portion of the 
manor as early as the reign of Henry YI., now acquired this 
third also. Upon a wooded eminence, several miles from the 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 217 

castle, Mr. Bird built a small quaint dwelling-liouse in a CHAP. 
castellated style, with little turrets at the corners of it, which ' 

was familiarly called " The Bird's Nest." * 

This is the Brougham from which "Henry, Baron Brougham 
and Vaux, of Brougham in the county of Westmorland," 
takes his title, and where he has persuaded himself his 
forefathers have lived in baronial grandeur since the time of 
Antoninus, 

In sober truth his ancestors, who, during the few genera- 
tions for which they could be traced, really were called 
Brougham (a name not rare in Westmorland and Cumber- 
land), were statesmen or small freeholders, being owners of a 
farm in Cumberland called " Scales Hall." This farm they 
cultivated as respectable yeomen, and, by their industry and 
frugality, became well-to-do in the world. Aspiring to 
absolute gentility the Chancellor's real ancestor, at an 
heraldic visitation by Sir William Dugdale, Garter King-at- 
Arms, for the county of Cumberland in 1665, not yet 
venturing to assume the addition of ^' Esquire," and calling 
himself only " Henry Brougham, of Scales Hall, Gentleman,'' 
presented a claim to be entitled to bear arms — " but it was 
respited for exhibiting the arms and proofs " — and it does not 
seem to have been renewed.! 

John Brougham, the next owner of Scales, called "the 
Commissioner," great grand-uncle of the Chancellor, having 
accumulated a considerable sum of money by skilful farming 
and cattle dealing, and by acting as commissioner, or 

* " The hall, when he came to reside there, obtained the name of Bird- 
nest, which he called it partly on account of his name, and partly from the 
appearance of the house at the time, which was almost hid by trees, the 
chimneys only being in view; and even to this day many old pcojile in 
the neighbourhood know it by no other name." — Ilutahimon s Hist, of West- 
morland, vol. i. p. 303. It would seem, however, that there had before been 
some sort of house there called Brougliam Hall. 

t Nicolson and Barn's ' History of Westmorland and Cumberland,' vol. i. 
p. 395. The authors of this work, who were very laborious antiquarians, 
in speaking of the " Scales Broughams," say : " We have met with no 
authentic account of tho pedigree of this family of Brougham." The 
pedigree presented to Sir William Dugdale did not go higher than the 
claimant's grandfather, and did not affect to derive him from Walter, or 
Odoard, or any of the Broughams, or Do Burghams, of Brougham Castle. 
It was likewise entirely silent about tlie descent from the De Vaulxcs, >v1uch, 
if known, might have encouraged the claimant to style himself Esquire. 



218 EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, steward, to several large landed proprietors in tlie neigh- 
' bourhood, purchased from James Bird Brougliam Hall, or 
the " Bird's Nest," which although a domain of small extent, 
had been much improved, and could now boast of great 
beauty and amenity. Having no children of his own he left 
the Westmorland property to his nephew, the Chancellor's 
grandfather, the noted attorney, steward to the Duke of 
Norfolk. This "Mr. Brougham of Brougham" was a very 
active bustling gentleman, and is said to have taken a con- 
spicuous part in the politics of the city of London during the 
disputes between Wilkes and the House of Commons. He 
resided chiefly at the Bird's Nest, taking however great pains 
to drop this appellation and to restore the more aristocratic 
name of Brougham Hall. But the rejection of the word 
Hall was reserved for his illustrious descendant, and I do 
not find that he himself or his son claimed to be chief 
of the Broughams of Brougham Castle, or represented 
Brougham Hall as Broacum, or the seat of the ancient 
crusaders.* 

These pretensions on the part of Lord Brougham had the 

effect of raising doubts as to his right to the house and land, 

and certain persons of the name of Bird, who claimed to be 

the heirs of the former owners of the " Bird's Nest," in the 

year 1846, actually attempted to seize the mansion mana 

forti. This gave rise to a trial at the Westmorland Assizes 

when Sir Thomas Wilde (afterwards Lord Chancellor Truro) 

attended as counsel for the ex-Chancellor, and proving a 

clear title by occupation for more than sixty years, obtained 

a verdict. The continuous possession since the time of 

^ Antoninus was hinted at, but the counsel truly said that 

' " to go farther would be to overload the case with unnecessary 

proof." 

Brougham's Tliis skctch of the history of " Brougham," a place made 

grandfather, ^ 

* In Hutchinson's 'History of Cuniberhmd,' vol. i. p. 300, there is a sort of 
pedigree of the Broughams, atteniiiting to connect the Scales family with 
the ancient De IJurgliams through a Vvter, supposed to be a yoiniger son of 
Thomas de Burgham, temp, riiil. and IMary. But tliis is wholly unau- 
thenticated; and the autlior himself snys, "the tabU^ may more properly 
be called an nccount of this ancirnt family than a reguhir descent, the family 
papers allbrding us little light as to the point of suecesriiou iu the right 
line." 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 219 

historical by its present possessor, may not be devoid of CHAP, 
interest, but I must now hasten to relate what further I ' 

have learned of the Chancellor's grandfather, the first of his 
ancestors of whom we have any authentic information. He 
married Mary, daughter of the Kev. William Freeman, a 
respectable clergyman, and had by her a numerous family, 
who were well educated and settled respectably in the 
world. 

Henry, the eldest son (as I have been several times told Father. 
by the Chancellor), was sent to Eton, and there had the 
Duke of Buccleuch for his fag. As he grew up he displayed 
much cleverness, but still more eccentricity. Coming while 
still quite a young man, by his father's death, into the small 
patrimony of Brougham Hall, he did not embrace any pro- 
fession nor devote himself to farming or rural sports, but 
spent his time in reading and in roaming about the country. 
In the summer of 1777 he set out upon a tour in Scotland, 
meaning to pass only a few weeks there, but there he spent 
the whole remainder of his days, and there he died without 
having recrossed the border. 

While walking round the ramparts of the Castle of Edin- 
burgh he was so much struck with the beauties of this 
"romantic town" that he resolved to take up his abode 
here for a time, and he was recommended to the lodging- 
house of Mrs. Syme, the widow of a clergyman, and the sister 
of Dr. Robertson, the historian. Although reduced in circum- ]\iarriage of 
stances she was of very ladylike manners, and Mr. Brougham, !jnj^^*other 
being much struck by her agreeable conversation, was glad 
to become an inmate in her establishment. The same even- 
ing he found that she had an only child — a most beautiful 
and accomplished daughter in the fresh bloom of youth. At 
first sight he was in love, and as soon as propriety would 
allow he solicited her hand in marriage. The young lady 
expressed great reluctance to leave her widowed parent, 
whereupon he offered to give up his pursuits in England and 
for her sake to fix himself in Edinburgli, where by strict 
economy they might decently live upon the revenue derived 
from his small property in Westmorland. Such proofs of 
devoted attachment overcame all obstacles. The marriajre 



220 REIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, ^as arranged, and in due time was solemnised by Br. Eobert- 
son, uncle of the bride.* 



The young couple having prudently determined to live within 
their means, took an upper flat or floor in the house No. 19 
on the north side of St. Andrew's Square, the south windows 
looking upon St. Griles's spire and the old town, and those 
opposite commanding an extensive view across the Firth of 
Forth into the fertile county of Fife, t 
Birth of Here, on the 19th day of September, 1778, was born their 

Brougham, eldest SOU Henry, the future Lord Chancellor of Great 
Britain. 

Like some other great men, he tried to make a mystery 
both with respect to the place and time of his birth. He 

* Thus Dr. Eobertson was the grand uncle of the children of this marriage, 
and it is bare justice to our Lord Chancellor to say that he was as j^roud 
of his real relationship to the celebrated historian as he pretended to be of his 
imaginary descent from the crusader. I have frequently heard him allude 
to it publicly in the House of Lords as well as in private conversation ; and 
he added that through the Robertsons he had in his veins the blood of all the 
most distinguished Presbyterian reformers. He would not even patiently 
allow any one to criticise Dr. Robertson's writings, or to say that his kinsman 
did not speak as well as write English better than native Englishmen. 

t In this account of the marriage of the Chancellor's father and mother, 
I had closely followed the authentic information I had received from persons 
intimately connected with the family ; but I have since found the following 
statement, headed "The House in which Lord Chancellor Brougham was 
bom," in Chambers's • Recollections of Edinburgh,' and I think it ought to 
be submitted to the reader : *' He was about to be married to a lady in his 
own neighbourhood to whom he was passionately attached, and every prepara- 
tion had been made for their nuptials when, to Mr. Brougham's great grief his 
mistress died. To beguile himself of his sorrows, he determined on travelling 
and came to Edinburgh, where wandering about on the Castle Hill to view the 
city, he happened to inquire of a fellow-idler where he could find respectable 
and convenient lodgings. He was directed to Mrs. Syme sister of Principal 
Robertson, widow of the Rev. Mr. Syme, minister of Alloa, who then kept the 
largest and most genteel boarding and lodging establishment in town in the 
second flat of IMcLellan's land, head of the Cowgate, the front windows of 
which look straight up the Candlemaker Row. Here Mr. Brougham forthwith 
proceeded to settle himself, and though he did not at first contemplate a 
permanent residence in tliis city, he soon found occasion to make that resolu- 
tion ; for, falling in love with Miss Eleanor Syme, Avho was a young lady of 
great merit and beauty, he abandoned his early sorrows, and espousing her, 
lived all tlie rest of his life in Edinburgh. He resided for some time after his 
marriage in Mrs. Lyme's house, and thereafter removed to No. 19, St. Andrew's 
Square, where Henry Brougham, who has since risen by the pure force of 
genius to a distinction equally honourable to himself and the country which 
gave him birth, first saw the Hght." — Chambers s Itccollcdions of HdinJjKnjh, 
vol. i. J). 191. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 221 

seems to have wished that the well-known couplet might be CHAP. 

applied to him : — ' 

* Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Ehodos, Argos, Athenge, 
Orbis de patria certat, Homere, tua.' 

Accordingly, of the printed memoirs of his life now lying 
before me, one makes him born in London,* another in Cumber- 
land, and a third in Westmorland. His latest biographer boasts 
of superior accuracy, and declares that he cannot be mistaken, 
as he proceeds upon the authority of the noble biographee. 
" The place of his nativity was long ago settled satisfactorily 
by his Lordship himself, who, during the contest for the 
representation of Yorkshire in ]830, while addressing the 
electors at Leeds on the 26th July, met the objection urged 
against him on the score of his having no interest in the 
county by declaring that he spent one week more in York- 
shire than he did in Westmorland annually, ^ although,' 
continued he, ' I am a Westmorland man by birth and 
possessions.' " f 

Accounts sanctioned by him likewise varied as to the 
time when he first saw the light — the day in the Peerages 
being the 19th of September, 1779 — but if this was accurate 
he must very rapidly have acquired the full use of his limbs ; 
for in the authentic ^ Life of Francis Horner,' by his brother 
Leonard, we find this statement : — " His earliest friend was 
Henry Brougham ; before we left St. David Street in May, 
1780, they used to run together on the pavement before our 
door." 

But in truth the place and time of his birth as I have 
given them are as capable of authentication as those of 
Albert Prince of Wales, the heir apparent to the throne. % 

* ' Biogmphie nouvelle des Contemporains,' torn, iii., p. 519: "Brougham, 
[Henri] est ne' a Londres vers 1779." 

t ' Law Magazine,' vol. Hi., August, 1854, p. 2. 

X Extract from the Register of Births of the City of Edinburgh : — 

"30th Sept., 1778. Heniy Brougham, Esq., Parish of St. Giles, and 
Eleanor Syme, his spouse, a son, born the 19th current, named Henry Peter; 
Witnesses, Mr. Archibald Hope, Iloyul Bank, and the Reverend Principal 
Robertson." 

I cannot say that he ever mentioned in my hearing the time of his birth, 
but he has told me the numljer of the house iu St. Andrew's Square, Edin- 
burgh, in whicli he was born. 



222 



EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 



CHAP. 
I. 

His pieco- 
cious in- 
fancy. 



Talents and 
virtues of 
his mother. 



I do not hear that any dreams, omens, or extraordinary 
appearances in the heavens prognosticated his future great- 
ness ; but it is quite certain that from earliest infancy he gave 
indications of being something quite extraordinary. Before 
he could walk he ran about on all fours with wonderful 
energy, and he was constantly in motion. He spoke much 
earlier and more distinctly than children usually do, and he 
improved his articulation by incessant exercise. He would 
imprudently climb upon chairs and tables and fall flat to the 
ground amidst the laughter of his playmates; but he sprung 
suddenly on his legs and became a successful candidate for 
applause by some new feat of agility. His nurse, Barbara or 
Bawhy Dempster, found great difficulty in hushing him to 
sleep at night. On one occasion she had prevailed upon him 
to lie down, and although still awake, to shut his eyes while 
she hummed him a lullaby; but he suddenly started up, 
saying, " Naw, naw, Bawby, it wunna' du'' * In his child- 
hood he lisped the broadest Scotch, and indeed he has spoken 
English with a genuine Caledonian accent and pronunciation 
all his life. 

I have not been able to learn anything with certainty 
respecting his education till he went to the High School. It 
is said, and with great probability, that he was taught to read 
at home by his mother. She was a most remarkable woman 
for intellect, for acquirements, for engaging manners, and for 
devoted attention to her maternal duties. Mr. Brougham, 
her husband, although irreproachable in his moral conduct 
and very affectionate both as a husband and a father, inter- 
fered little with the management of the family and was 
almost entirely absorbed in his own literary pursuits, which 
had nothing for their object beyond his own amusement. 
Henry traced to his mother both his genius and its early cul- 
tivation. She thoroughly understood his disposition and was 
ever on the watch to encourage his laudable aspirations and 
to repress his irregularities. In all the vicissitudes of his life 
she continued to show her discernment and disinterestedness, 
insomuch that when she first heard of her boy being Lord 

* Tills vowel must be pmnoniiced like the French w, — very difficult to 
English, but very naturul to tScoteh organs. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 223 

Chancellor and a Peer, instead of exulting, as most mothers CHAP, 
would have done, she exclaimed, "Well, if he is pleased I ' 

must not complain; but it would have suited our Henry 
better to have continued member for the county of York and 
a leader of the Liberals in the House of Commons." * 

Lord Brougham never spoke irreverently of his father, but 
evidently did not consider himself under any peculiar obliga- 
tions to him. The following sketch of the old gentleman is 
by my late friend Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, who was very 
intimate with the whole family : — 

" I have the old gentleman's figure perfectly before me at this 
moment when taking his walk in George Street, confining his 
turns entirely to the short space between his own door and the 
bend of Hanover Street. He wore his hair powdered and tied, a 
stock, and ruffled shirt like the driven snow, a peagreen coat cut 
away in front and confined by a single button over an ample 
white waistcoat, nankeen short breeches, large silver or gold 
buckles in bis shoes, and a tall gold-headed cane in his hand, 
which he grasped at some distance from the head, and the point 
of which he put to the ground with a mathematical exactness as 
regarded his steps." 

Lord Brougham's education was essentially and exclusively ^^^ ^^^^oi 

. education. 

fecotch, and his brilliant career renects great credit upon our 
system, which certainly does, with all its deficiencies, well 

* Since writing the above, I have received from Lord Murray, the Scottish 
Judge, who was much attached to Mrs. Brougham, the following beautiful 
little sketch of her and of her son Henry : — " The memory of Mrs. Brougham is 
dear to all who were well acquainted with her. She was kind, considerate, 
calm, and intelligent ; and ready without a shadow of pretension to assist 
eveiy person who stood in need of her unobtrusive aid. She was fully able 
to appreciate the great talent of her eldest son, and much devoted to hiin, 
but I doubt whether any person, however intimately acquainted with her, 
could have observed any partial measure of affection bestowed upon one of 
her children more than another. Their welfare was her constant object, but 
so imperceptibly and steadily pursued, as not to attract the notice of any but 
intimate friends. Henry Brougham was a most aifectionate son, though ho 
was in no way disposed to display thafc or any other of his tender feelings. 
He thouglit tliat she would be much amused with seeing Paris, and he took her 
there at a time when I happened to be there. She became unwell, and nothing 
could exceed his attention to her. I recollect ransacking all Paris with him 
to get calf s foot jelly, which invalids in Scotland and most parts of England 
are accustomed to have ; but strange to say it was not to be found or (;ven 
known in that city of cooks, and we got M. Beauvilliers, a great Kestauratcnr, 
and also, as he said, 'un peu medecin,' to make a jelly of 'pied do poulet,' 
■^vhich was the nearest approach we could get." 



224 EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP, answer the grand end of education by cultivating and invigo- 
' rating the intellectual faculties. When he entered the High 
A.D. 1786. School, Adam, to whom so many owe a taste for classical 
literature, was head-master; but he began with an under- 
master, named Fraser, who, though a very zealous teacher, 
was not supposed to be much of a scholar. As his pupil, 
young Henry Brougham made wonderful proficiency in spite 
of occasionally taking delight in teazing him and playing 
tricks upon him. The Scotch Judge, Lord Cockburn, who 
was at the High School at the same time, has related to me 
the following anecdote : — " An exercise being given out — to 
translate a paper of the ' Spectator ' into Latin — Brougham 
set to work upon it, with a view to mystify Eraser, and intro- 
duced several expressions for which he had classical authority, 
but which had the aspect of bald and barbarous Latinity. 
At first he had to repent of the joke, for Eraser called him 
up, and actually punished him with the * taws' or ferula, 
partly for his alleged bad Latin, and partly for his imperti- 
nence in maintaining that it was good. I^ext morning, how- 
ever, Henry Brougham entered the school with a load of 
books upon his back, and out of these he demonstrated that 
all his alleged Anglicisms or solecisms had been used by 
Koman writers of the Augustan age. Fraser had the magna- 
nimity to listen to him, and to compliment him on his 
industry and taste ; and from that time the flogged boy was 
hailed as the king of the school." * 

An insatiable thirst after knowledge, a singular aptitude 
for acquiring it, unbounded self-confidence, and an utter con- 
tempt for the ordinary rules of life, appear to have cha- 

* I believe these are substantially the words of Lord Cockburn as spoken to 
me. Since I wrote them his ' Memorials of his Time' have been published, 
from which I copy the following extract :— " Brougham made his first public 
explosion while at Fraser's class. He dared to dilfor from Fraser, a hot but 
good natured old fellow, on some small bit of Latinity. The master, like 
other men in power, maintained his own infallibility, punished the rebel, and 
flattened himself that the atfair was over. But Brougham rcaiipe^ired 
next day, loaded with books, returned to the charge before the wliole class, 
and compelled honest Luke to acknowledge that he had been wrong. This 
made Brougham famous throughout the whole school." In a critique on Lord 
Cockbuni's book in the 'Law lleview,' evidently from the pen of Lord 
Brougham, he throws discredit on this anecdote without expressly con- 
tradicting it. 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 225 

racterisecl him from early boyliood. While at the High School CHAP. 



he not only diligently attended to the tasks set him, but ' 

voluntarily made considerable proficiency in modern languages a.d. i786 
and in mathematics. Mr. Eichardson, a valued friend of mine ^ '^^• 
and a far-away cousin of Brougham, writes to me : — 

" The first time I was introduced to him he was about twelve 
years old, and was on one of the bridges at Edinburgh, with a 
huge quarto under his arm, which proved to be a Yolume of the 
work of La Place, in the original. I wondered what sort of a 
lad this must be who not only studied mathematics for pleasure, 
but through the medium of a foreign tongue." 

It would appear that at the same time he partook of 
theatrical amusements, and that he acquired some reputation 
as a critic in the dramatic art. The following anecdote is in 
the words of Professor Pillans, a distinguished classical scholar, 
w^ho was born the same year with Brougham, was in the 
same class with him at the High School, was for some 
years head-master of that school, and now worthily fills the 
Humanity Chair in the University of Edinburgh, having been 
a public teacher above forty-six years. By way of explanation 
I must state — what Professor Pillans reminded me of, and 
what I myself perfectly well recollect, — that in the end of the 
last and the beginning of the present century, whenever there 
was a dinner-party, after the ladies had withdrawn, the gentle- 
men continued giving toasts at every round of the bottle, till 
at last the toast of " Good afternoon " was given, upon which 
the party broke up and left the room : — " While we were under 
Fraser together a new play was to be brought out at the 
Edinburgh Theatre, written by Robert Herron, a very foolish 
fellow. It was called, I think. The Jolly Toj^er. I went by 
myself to the shilling gallery, whei'e I met very good com- 
pany. I hope you know that we modern Athenians consider 
that we have a very delicate taste in the drama, but are very 
tolerant to a new piece till we can fully judge of its merits, 
and then we are very decisive. This piece was exceedingly 
absurd and dreadfully dull, thougli intended to be witty. 
The first four acts were heard out, though with a few groans 
and hisses. Wlien the curtain drew up for the fifth act, tlie 
stage was occupied by a large party at table, with bottles 

VOL. VIIL Q 



226 



EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 



CHAP. 
1. 



^.D. 1786- 
1791. 



A.D. 1792. 
At Collecre. 



and glasses before them. The gentleman in the chair then 
flourishing his glass, said, ' All charged ! Give us a toast ! ' 
when a tall stripling in the pit stood up and exclaimed, ' I 
humbly propose Good Afternoon.' He then made for the 
door, waving his hat for the rest of the audience to follow 
him ; and the cry of Good Afternoon being repeated by boxes, 
pit, and galleries, there was a general dispersion, and the 
piece was damned. This stripling Avas Henry Brougham, 
the future Lord Chancellor." * 

In the end of the year 1789 Brougham was promoted to 
the class of Dr. Adam, the Eector ; but he had barely im- 
pressed this enthusiastic teacher with a notion of his extra- 
ordinary powers, when the poor boy was seized with an illness 
which kept him at home near a twelvemonth. His love of 
reading did not forsake him, and, stretched on a couch, he 
still constantly had a book in his hand. When he returned tQr 
school in October, 1790, the Eector said to Lord Murray t (who 
told me), " That boy, although he has been absent so long, 
will beat you all." Ere long he was Dux, and he so continued 
till August, 1791, when he left the school with the dangerous 
reputation of a " Prodigy." This might have been his ruin, 
but he was endowed with unexampled and inexhaustible 
energy to carry him with distinction through every stage of 
his long career. 

In 1792 he became an alumnus of the University of Edin- 
burgh, then in its glorious zenith. Here (every one knows) 
the mode of teaching is by lectures from professors, who per- 
manently devote themselves to one branch of literature or 
science, as in the foreign universities, instead of the students 
being, as in England, under the tuition of a single indi- 
vidual, who only plies his task till he gets a living in the 
Church, and who is supposed to instruct his pupils de omni 
scibili.X 

* Told to rac at Hnrtriggc, 12tli October, 1855. 

t Fnincis Horiior and Lord IMurrny entered the High School hi 1787, a year 
later than Brougham. 

X I liad forgotten the English bisection of knowledge, and that there are 
two tutors, one said to bo for mathematics, and one lor classics. It is, indeed, 
marvellous that such a syslem should turn out men so accomplished, altliough 
it must still be confessed that a senior icnuujh r and dovhle-Jirst class man may 
be ignorant of much which a well educated person ought to know. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 227 

During a cnrriculum of four years, Brougham attended CHAP, 
almost all tlie classes, including that of Church History,* ' 

and acquired a store of information, which, if not always a.d. 1792- 
profound and exact, was prodigiously extensive, and over ^^^^* 
which, with the assistance of a powerful memory, he ever 
had a ready command ; insomuch that if shut up in a tower 
without books, at the end of a year he would have produced 
(barring a few ludicrous blunders) a very tolerable ' Ency- 
clopaedia.' 

When only eighteen he wrote and sent to the Koyal Society His papers 
of London a paper entitled ' Experiments and Observations r^^JVo-^ 
on the Inflection, Eeflection, and Colours of Light ;' which cmtj on 
was read before that learned body and published by them 
among their ' Transactions.' t 

Thus he commences with characteristic boldness and con- 
fidence : — 

" It has always appeared wonderful to me, since Xature seems 
to delight in those close analogies which enable her to preserve 
simplicity and even uniformity in variety, that there should be 
no dispositions in the parts of light, with respect to inflection 
and reflection, analogous or similar to their different refrangi- 
bility. In order to ascertain the existence of such properties, I 
began a course of experiments and observations, a short account 
of which forms the substance of this paper." 

He then takes great credit to himself for the care and 
patience with which he had made and repeated his experi- 
ments, guarding against any preconceived theory, the danger 
of which he illustrated by the saying of a Brahmin, that it 
will make a man believe " a piece of sandal-wood to be a flame 
of fire." 

The following year he presented another paper to the Koyal 
Society of London, containing ' Farther Experiments and Ob- 
servations on the Applications and Properties of Light.' i 

* " 1702. Brougham. Litt. Hum. 2. Litt. Gr. 2. Math. 

1793. Brougham. Litt. Gr. 2. Log. Phys. Math. 2. 

1794. Brougham. Rhct. Eth. 

1795. Brougham. Jur. Civ. Inst." 

Exlraded frorn Matriculation Book of University of Edinburgh. 
t Vol. Ixxxvi. pp. 227-277. Read January 28th, 179G. 
X 'Transactions,' vol. Ixxxvii. pp. 352-382. Eead June 15th, 1797. 

Q 2 



228 



EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 



CHAP. 
I. 



A.D. 1792 
1795. 



The young philosoplier does not seem tlien to have caused 
much sensation in this island, but he was criticised by Pro- 
fessor Prevost of Geneva, in a paper read before the Koyal 
Society the following year.* This antagonist, although 
courteous in phrase, was very severe upon him, complaining 
particularly of the indistinctness of his propositions ; " il 
semble qu'il ne parle pas d'une maniere precise — " 

But Brougham himself, at this time, seems sincerely to have 
believed that he was another Newton. He spoke respectfully 
of him who 

" Untwisted all the sliining robe of day," 

but he does not conceal the conviction that the prism in his 
own hand was about to disclose greater wonders than had 
hitherto been told to mankind. And having accomplished 
so much in Optics, he proceeded in due course to " the higher 
parts of geometry," anticipating the discovery of a new col- 
cuius which would supersede Fluxions. In 1798 he presented 
OnPorisms. to the Eoyal Society of London a paper 'On Porisms,' which 
he thus modestly eulogises : — t 

" As a collection of c"uriou« general truths of a nature, so far as 
I know, hitherto quite unknown, I am persuaded this paper, 
with all its defects, may not be unacceptable to those who feel 
pleasure in contemplating the varied and beautiful relations 
between abstract quantities, the wonderful and extensive analo- 
gies which every step of our progress in the higher parts of 
geometry opens to our view." 

Unfortunately, never having myself advanced in geometry 
much beyond the first six books of Euclid, and having a very 
imperfect notion of a ^orism, even after reading that, " it is 
a proposition affirming the possibility of finding such condi- 
tions as will render a certain problem indeterminate, or 
capable of innumerable solutions," I cannot presume to 
offer any opinion upon Brougham's i^oristie propositions on 
the conic hyperhola. I have heard it flippantly observed by 
persons who })retended to be competent judges of the propo- 
sitions in this and his other Papers presented to the Boyal 
Society, thiit *' such as are true are not new, and such as are 
new arc not true." Nevertheless, from my intimate know- 



Tmnsactious,' vol. Ixxxviii. p. oil 



t Il)id.,i)p. 378-39G. 



. LIFE OP LORD BEOUGHAM. 229 

ledge of him, I should say that he has a very good head for CHAP, 
mathematics, and that if he had devoted himself to abstract ' 



science he might have been a discoverer, although his jperfer- a.d. 1792- 
vidum ingenmm carried him off to other pursuits before he ^^^^• 
had fairly entered into rivalry with the great philosopher 
whose fame he hoped to eclipse. He deserves no small praise 
for having shown such high aspirations at such an early age ; 
and it is creditable to the land of his birth and education 
that he was qualified to engage the attention of the first 
scientific body in Europe by such speculations at an age 
when in England the sixth form boy wastes all his energies 
on longs and shorts. 

These scientific exercitations of Brougham, while at college. His great 
were viewed by him rather as extravagances for the purpose ^g^atinc^^" 
of amusing himself and astonishing his contemporaries. He societies. 
believed his real business to be in Debating Societies, which 
have long been the grand stimulus to mental effort in the 
Scottish universities. On the 21st of November, 1797, he 
was admitted a member of "the Speculative," along with 
Francis Horner, and they were soon joined by Lord Henry 
Petty, afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne. This was a school 
for literary composition, as well as for oratory ; the first pro- 
ceeding of the evening being the reading of an essay. The 
following subjects are said to have been written upon very 
ably by Brpugham : — " The Effect on Scotland of the Union 
with England ;" " The Balance of Power ;" " Indirect Influ- 
ence of the People :" " Influence of National Opinion on 
External Relations." 

But it was in the oral discussions on some grave question 
of morals, liistory, or political economy, that he chiefly dis- 
tinguished himself; and here he gave full earnest of the 
pugnacious powers which he afterwards displayed in both 
Houses of Parliament. He was then considered the readiest 
and most energetic speaker that had appeared among tlie 
Edinburgh students, and it was truly prophesied that he 
would maintain his reputation for readiness and energy when 
removed to a much wider sphere. 

Meanwhile he was almost equally distinguished for his iHs inegu' 
irregularities, which, however, were all of a venial dcscrip- ^^'■'^'^'*- 



230 



EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 



CHAP. 
I. 

A.D. 1792- 
1795. 



At the Cale- 

doniau 

Hunt. 



tion, and were to be accounted for by his early passion for 
universality. 

" Brougham's companions consisted of two sorts, viz., intel- 
lectual men, such as Jeffrey, Cock burn, and Murray, — and fellows 
of dissipation, fun, and frolick, such as Sandie Finlay, Jack 
Gordon, and Frank Drummond. Perhaps these two sorts of 
associates might have occasionally blended themselves together. 
But after having been found discussing literary and jDhilosophical 
questions with the first set, he was sure soon after to be found 
rollicking in taverns, ringing bells in the streets, twisting off 
bell-pulls and knockers, or smashing lamps, with the second."* 

On one occasion, when there seems to have been a coalition 
of the two sets — for Jeffrey, Cockburn, Moncriefif, afterwards 
Lord Moncrieff, and Cunninghame, afterwards Lord Cun- 
ninghame, were present — Brougham, after having himself 
twisted off divers knockers and smashed divers lamps, sud- 
denly disappeared ; and the result showed that, for the sake 
of having a wicked laugh against his companions, he had 
gone and given information against tliem to the police, that 
they might be shut up all night in the tolbooth and carried 
next morning before the Lord Provost. However, they took 
to their heels on the police appearing, and they all escaped 
except one, who likewise got off by a bribe of five shillings 
to his captor, t 

While at college Brougham never went to Edinburgh balls 
or assemblies, although they were much frequented by other 
students; but he was a member of several convivial clubs, 
and took the lead in them whenever he appeared. One 
autumn, by way of seeing a little of what was in Scotland 
considered "fashionable life," he went to the meetinjr of the 
Caledonian Hunt, which was held at Dumfries. According 
to the prevailing custom, all orders and degrees dined at a 
tahle dlwte, and after dinner all sorts of bets were laid. 
Brougham offered a wager agaiiist the whole company that 
none of them would write down in a sealed packet the manner 
in which he meant to travel to the races which were to take 
place a few miles from Dumfries the next day. As many as 



* Letter to mo from Sir Thomas Dick Lnudor, Bart. 
t This ancoelotc I luul from Lord Cumiinghame. 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 231 

Ciiose to accept his challenge wrote down their conjectures, CHAP, 
which were sealed up along with his actual purpose. When ' 



the packets were opened, it was found that he would go in a a.b. 1792- 
sedan-chair, which none of them had thought of. Accord- ^^^^• 
ingly, he made his progress to the races carried in that way, 
and accompanied by an immense crowd. After dinner he 
renewed the bet against all who chose to take it, and when 
the packets were opened he was equally successful. He had 
written down that he would go in a post-chaise and pair, all 
the persons who had accepted the bet haying written down 
the strangest and most absurd modes of conveyance they 
could devise. In whatever company he was, he betrayed a 
resolution to make himself prominent and to be talked of, 
which pleased him nearly at much as unmixed admiration.* 

At the Scotch universities there is a curriculum of four 
years for " Humanity and Philosophy," by which we under- 
stand general unprofessional academical training, supposed 
to be adapted for all who are to appear in the world as men 
of education, whether divines, lawyers, physicians, soldiers, 
sailors, or country squires, — embracing the learned languages, 
rhetoric, logic and moral philosophy, mathematics, natural 
philosophy, astronomy, and political economy. This Brougham 
finished in the year 1795. He had no opportunity of gaining 
academical honours. At Edinburgh scholastic disputations 
were abandoned, and even the granting of degrees, except 
in medicine, had ceased. He had a prodigious general 
reputation for talent and acquirements, and perhaps it was 
rather lucky for him that no tripos had been established, 
requiring written examinations ; for his knowledge was rather 
multifarious than exact, and if called upon categorically to 
give written answers to nice questions and actually to solve 
difficult problems proposed to him at the instant, I am afraid 
that Professor Prevost's remark might have been repeated, 
that he was " wanting in precision ;" so that men reckoned 
dull might have been placed far above him. But if the 
trial had been to give an impi-omptu lecture for a given 
number of days upon any subject that might be })roposed, I 
verily believe that he would have beaten all the "AYranglers" 

* Ex relatione Sir Tliuums Dick Luiidcr. 



232 EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP, and " Double-firsts " who had taken honours at Cambrido-e 



I. 



1800, 

He chooses 
the profes- 
sion of an 
Advocate. 



and Oxford for seven years. 
A.D. 1795- He had now to choose a profession. He was heir-apparent 
to Brougham Hall, but this property produced annually only 
a few hundred pounds, — an income barely sufficient decently 
to support the family, the numbers being increased by tlie 
arrival of several brothers and sisters. He did not hesitate 
long. The French War was raging ; but he never had much 
inclination for fighting unless with words, wherein he was the 
most combative of men. If the endowments of the Church 
of Scotland had not been so poor, he might have devoted 
himself to pulpit eloquence ; and in that case I doubt not he 
would have acquired fame as a preacher not inferior to that 
of Knox, Melville, and Chalmers. He had most admirable 
qualities, physical and mental, for this exercitation. The 
danger Avould have been that he might have tired his congre- 
gation by dwelling too long on the same topic, whether severe 
or pathetic, and that he might unconsciously have preached 
rank heresy from not having accurately studied the Con- 
fession of Faith. Without really meaning " to wag his head 
in the pulpit," as he had a taste for genuine eloquence 
wherever displayed, he used to follow the popular Presby- 
terian preachers, particularly Sir Henry Moncrieff and Mr. 
Greenfield; and many years afterwards he, with wonderful 
success, occasionally modelled his own tones and gestures 
after theirs.* 

He had a great relish for medical books ; he would occa- 
sionally attend Dr. Monroe's lectures on anatomy, and he 
Avould even be present when some remarkable surgical opera- 
tion was to take place in the infirmary ; but to spend his life 
in feeling pulses and writing prescriptions was wholly at 
variance with all his notions of dignity and enjoyment. 

Law alone remained; and although he was alarmed by 
what he heard of its dry technicalities, he felt that he had 
resolution to master them. He was delighte;! by scenes in 

* 'J'liiH lio lins himself tohl mo, and I mi,s::lit have observed : — e.g., his attitudo 
in liis peroration in the Queen's case, with both arms equally uplifted above 
his head, was exactly that of a Scotch Presbyteriau minister in blessing the 
congregation. . • 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 233 

the Parliament House, which appeared in vision before him, CHAP, 
and in which he himself was to play the principal part. He ' 



thought he might 5^et be Lord President of the Court of a.d. 1795- 
Session, and it is said that even at this early period the eleva- ^^^^' 
tion of Wedderburn to the woolsack had given him a glimpse 
of the future glory which awaited him in a wider sphere. He 
expressed a strong desire to be an Advocate, and his father 
and mother concm-red in this choice. 

According to ancient usage, he ought to have been sent to His law 
prosecute his legal studies at the University of Leyden ; but s^"^^^^- 
since the time of Boswell, the celebrated biographer, the 
tuition of foreign jurists had been considered unnecessary to 
qualify for the Scottish bar, and after the curriculum through 
which he had gone, nothing more was demanded than attend- 
ance for two years upon the lectures of the Professor of Civil 
Law in the University of Edinburgh, to be followed up by 
examinations and a juridical thesis as tests of proficiency. In 
truth, great laxity in the required preparations for the forum 
had been introduced both in Scotland and in England, — can- 
didates being left almost entirely to the freedom of their own 
will whether or not they were initiated even in the rudiments 
of their profession, and being allowed to assume the robe on 
going through certain ceremonies, for which the most idle 
might be competent. 

Brougham was ever earnest in what he undertook, and for 
a time devoting himself to the Pandects and to Craig, he 
gained a considerable insight into both Eoman and Feudal 
jurisprudence. By this discipline lie so far legalised his mind, 
that ever after, jpro re natd, he could understand, get up, and 
plausibly discuss any question of law which came in his way, 
however abstruse and however strange to him. But for want 
of continued and steady application he never approached the 
reputation of a " sound lawyer," and he used rashly to blurt 
out dicta which caused a general stare, and which would have 
ruined any other Advocate or Judge. 

During the period wlien he was attending the law classes 
he availed himself (probably with more relish) of the lectures 
of some of the other Professors, who then rendered Edin- 
burgh so illustrious — particularly of Dr. Black, Professor of 



234 



EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 



CHAP. 
I. 



A.D. 1795- 
1800. 

He founds 
the " Aca- 
demy of 
Physics." 



Chemistry, the discoverer of the true doctrine of latent heat, 
of whose inimitable skill in experimenting his pupil has given 
us a graphic description in a Life of that Philosopher. 

Continuing to act as leader of the " Speculative," he founded 
a new Society, which he named the " Academy of Physics," 
the professed object being "the investigation of Nature, the 
laws by which her phenomena are regulated, and the history 
of opinions concerning these laws." He declined the honour 
of being President, but he moved a special resolution defining 
the duties and powers of this great functionary : " To keep 
order, as he pleases, without limiting the freedom of discus- 
sion ; to ask all the members present their opinion, and not 
to allow a few to engross the conversation; to keep the 
speakers from wandering from the subject; to direct atten- 
tion, at intervals of silence, to what he thinks the most in- 
teresting points of the question under discussion ; to declare 
at the end of the meeting on what side he conceives the 
ojDinions of the majority to be ; and upon his election to the 
ofQce to make himself master immediately of the laws, cus- 
toms, and history of the Academy." The " Speculative " 
flourishes to this day, but the " Academy of Physics," from 
which so much was expected, perished prematurely, — the 
cause of its early dissolution (as was asserted by the wicked 
wags of Edinburgh) being that the founder engrossed the 
whole conversation to himself ; that no " interval of silence " 
w^as ever known to occur; that the President, finding his 
authority set at naught, abruptly left the chair ; and that no 
one would agree to be his successor. As no Transactions or 
Annals of the Academy were ever published, and no inquest 
sat upon the body, I can quote no written authority for this 
statement, and it may be unfounded or exaggerated ; but from 
what I myself have seen elsewhere, I may not, as a conscien- 
tious biographer reject it on the ground that it cannot j^ossihhj 
he true. 

jMeanwliilo he was admitted into a Socii^ty in which silence 
and secrecy are expected. In the summer of 17*Ji), along 
with a roistering party of fellow-students, he hired a vessel at 
Ghisgow to visit th(^ Hebrides. From their pranks she ac- 
quired the name of the * IMad Brig.' At Stornoway, in the 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. :35 

* 

Isle of Lewis, BrouD:liam almost frightened to death the master CHAP, 
of the hotel where they lodged by entering his bedi-oom ' 



during the night with loaded pistols, shooting a cat and pre- a.d. 1795- 
tending that he was a messenger from the infernal regions.* ^^^^' 
Nevertheless here he became a free and accepted Mason, 
as appears from the following entry in the Eecords of the 
Society : — 

" Fortrose Lodge, Stomoway, 20th of August, 1799 years. 
" Admitted as true and accepted Mason, 
Brother Henry P^er Brougham." 

On his return to Edinburgh after this spree, he applied 
himself diligently to his studies, and he flattered himseK by 
thinking that his fame was spreading in foreign lands. He a.d. I800. 
carried on a correspondence with some continental philo- 
sophers respecting his experiments on Light ; and Homer, 
when grinding for his examination to pass advocate, thus 
complains in his journal : — " Brougham came to show me a 
mathematical communication that had been anonymously sent 
from London, in which some criticisms were contained upon 
his last Paper on Porisms." 

Before commencing his forensic career he had a great 
desire to follow the example of Lord Bacon and Lord Mans- 
field by having the advantage of foreign travel ; but the 
French war then raged, and all the middle and southern 
states of Europe were closed to him. Under these circum- 
stances he gladly accepted an offer from Mr. Stuart, after- 
wards Lord Stuart de Rothesay, to accompany him on a hyper- 
borean tour, and crossing over to Hamburg they visited the 
capitals and the most interesting provinces of Sweden, Norway, 
and Denmark. But although well acquainted with Frencli 
and Italian, he never made any progress in Gothic or Scandi- 
navian dialects. 

On his return he did again dally a little with Porisms ; but "'"^ '"xami- 
lie found that the time was now come when he must descend thesis be- 
from " high geometry " and stoop to a little grinding, however 
small the chance might be of his being " plucked." Wliat 
distinction he gained by his examinations I know not, — all 



,. fore hiscnil 
to the Bar. 



* This was made tlie subject of a caricature published at Edinburgh, of 
which a copy lies before mt. 



236 REIGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP, the information I have been able to obtain on the subject 
' being comprised in the following extracts from the ' Minutes 

A.D. 1800. of the Faculty of Advocates ' : — 

" Edinburgh, 23r(i May, 1800. 
" Mr. Hemy Peter* Brougham, eldest son of Henry Brougham, 
Esq., of Brougham Hall, was examined on the Scots law, and 
found sufficientl}'- qualified. The Examinators recommended 
him to the Dean to assign him a subject for his publick examina- 
tion." 

" Edinburgh, 7th June, 1800. 
" Mr. Henry Peter Brougham, eldest son of Henry Brougham, 
Esq., of Brougham Hall, was publicly examined on Tit. F., 
Lib. 3. Digest. Be Negotiis Gestis, and found sufficiently quali- 
fied, &c. 

(Signed) " E. Dundas, D. F." 

The call of an advocate to the Scotch bar is nominally the 
act of the Lord President and other Senators of the College 
of Justice sitting in open court ; but it rests practically with 
the Dean and Faculty of Advocates, according to rules and 
regulations which they lay down from time to time. For- 
merly the candidate wrote a Latin Thesis on some title of the 
Civil Law, and engaged in a Latin disputation with all who 
came forward to combat any of his propositions. These tests 
of proficiency, however, had now fallen into neglect, and at 
the sitting of the Court on the 10th of June, 1800, Henry 
Peter Brougham appeared at the bar in the Parliament House, 
with a cocked hat under his arm, and, when the Judges took 
their seats, he began an oration according to a well-settled 
cantilena — *' Domine Praises, ingens liujus Curiae decus et 
ornamentum, et caeteri Senatores doctissimi, illustrissimi, 
honoratissimi," — Here he was stopped by a nod and a smile 
from the President, giving him to understand that his prayer 
to be admitted was granted. He then put on his cocked hat, 
took it off again, bowed to the Bench, retired, and was an 
Advocate. 

I have rei)eatcdly attempted in vain to learn from his 
Edinburgh contemporaries with whom I was intimate, some- 
thing of his first appearance t\s counsel in a cause: and the 

* IIo appears to have been baptised, and still to have called himself, Henry 
i't/er, but tho rctor he afterwards dn)pi)cd when ho settled in England. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 237 

Scotch Law Eeports, whicli I have diligently searched, do CHAP. 
not mention his name. I suspect that at this time, although ' 



his talents and acquirements had gained him a certain sort of a.d. isoo. 
celebrity, he was considered a man of science rather than a 
lawyer, and that no waiter to the signet would trust him with 
a brief. 

A common mode for a Scotch advocate to obtain an oppor- 
tunity for oratorical display without pecuniary profit was to 
be ordained a Euling Elder in some Kirk Session, and to be 
returned as a lay member of the General Assembly of the 
Church of Scotland, which meets yearly in the month of 
]\[ay, when very interesting debates take place respecting the 
induction and deposition of ministers and the putting down of 
heresy ; greater power lawfully belonging to this tribunal than 
has ever been claimed by the English Convocation. Principal 
Eobertson had been the leader of the governing party in the 
General Assembly many years, and it was thought that under 
his auspices his grand-nephew woukl commence public life 
by a speech in support of the right of lay patronage as esta- 
blished in the reign of Queen Anne, or by the prosecution or 
defence of some popular preacher, like Adam Blair, against 
whom there was a charge of immorality, — a theme justly 
thought to be peculiarly adapted to Brougham's powers, as 
was afterwards verified by his defence of Queen Caroline. 
But from this ready road to distinction he turned away with 
aversion — why I know not — for he could then have had no 
objection to conform in all things to the Established Presby- 
terian Church in which he was baptised, and with which he 
was in communion ; and there would have been no loss of 
dignity in taking this course as he would have found among 
his colleagues James Moncrieff, afterwards Lord Moncrieff ; 
tlie Hon. Henry Erskine, afterwards Dean of Faculty; and 
Charles Hope, afterwards Lord President of the Court of 
Session, together with several Scottish Peers. Some said 
that he had conscientious scruples about becoming (as it were) 
" a shred of the linen garment of Aaron," so soon after the 
notoriety he had acquired by wringing oft' brass knockers and 
by other such levities, but his versatility and his power of 



238 



EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 



CHAP. 
I. 

A.D. 1800. 

He resolves 
to make his 
fortune by 
defending 
pauper pri- 
soners at 
the Assizes. 



His appear- 
ance before 
Lord Esk- 
grove at 
Jedburgh. 



The Judge 
<;harged. 



acting a part were too considerable to allow such misgivings 
to have place in his own breast. 

Whatever might be his motive, it is certain that he said 
he had a surer way to get forward, which was to go a circuit, 
and act gratuitously as counsel for the pauper prisoners. 
According to Scottish procedure in the criminal courts a full 
defence by counsel was always allowed to all prisoners, what- 
ever might be the nature of the charge against them, and 
such as were too poor to retain counsel had counsel assigned 
to them by the Court. Brougham said he would go the 
Southern Circuit as a Brother of Mercy — " all his pleasure 
praise " — a young advocate who had officiated in this capacity 
having been promoted to be one of the Lord Advocate's 
Deputes or (as we say in England) Devils, and being now to 
prosecute the prisoners. The Judge of Assize was a foolish 
old gentleman, called Lord Eskgrove, of whom ludicrous 
stories had been told, and upon whom tricks had been played 
for near half a century. Brougham never much liked to 
grapple with a strong Judge, but had a natural delight in 
taking liberties with a feeble one. He seems to have laid 
down a systematic plan of making game of Lord Eskgrove. 
On this occasion he travelled from Edinburgh in a one-horse 
chaise, and as he entered Jedburgh, where the Assizes were 
to be held for the counties of Eoxburgh, Selkirk, Peebles, and 
Berwick, he found that the Judge's procesi^ion attended by 
the Sheriffs of the four counties, the magnates of Jedburgh, 
and other functionaries, with halbert men called " the 
Crailing Guard " was, according to ancient custom, marching 
across the High Street from the Spread Eagle Inn, where it 
had been formed, to the Town Hall in the Market Place, 
where the Court was to be held. The procession was ad- 
vancing at a very slow pace, all the population of the town 
having turned out to have a peep at my Lord Judge, wlio 
was arrayed in his full pontificals. Brougham, approaching 
at a liard trot, the Crailing Guard presented their halberts 
and ordered him to stop. He thereupon whipped his liorse, 
put to flight the Crailing Guard, charged the procession, 
broke the line a little ahead of the Judge, and the mob 



LIFE OF LORD BKOUGHAM. 239 

making way for him, drove on to his inn. There were great CHAP, 
apprehensions that the Judge woukl be upset in the kennel : ' 

but his Lordship escaped with a few splashes of mud, and took a.d. isoo. 
his seat on the bench. 

An extempore prayer was said by the clergyman of the 
parish, the sheriffs of counties were called over, and other 
preliminary forms were gone through, when Brougham 
entered the court, made a respectful bow to my lord, and 
took his seat at the bar, as if nothing extraordinary had 
happened. 

Lord Eskgrove was in great perplexity, feeling that he 
ought to have ordered the assailant to be committed for a 
contemjpt, but not having the courage to do so, and not knowing 
what other course to adopt. \\Tiile his lordship was evidently 
in a great fuss. Brougham rose and said very comjDosedly: 
" My Lord, the court is very close — I am afraid your Lord- 
ship may suffer from the heat ; — perhaps your Lordship will 
be pleased to order a window to be opened." A window was 
opened, and no further notice was ever taken of the fracas. 

Brougham was the only advocate present besides those who 
attended to conduct the prosecutions on behalf of the Cro^vn ; 
thus as a matter of course he was called upon to defend all 
the prisoners.* 

The first trial was for sheep-stealing, and Brougham defenceorl' 
objected to the relevancy of the libel, on the ground that it ^'>^^P- 
did not specify the sex of the animal stolen, without saying 
whether tup, ewe, or wether, which he contended was neces- 
sary for the purpose of informing the pannel exactly of the 
offence with which he was charged ; for to say that the offence 
was the same whether tup, ewe, or wether, was to say that 
tup, ewe, and wether were all one — a proposition which could 
be disproved by Bankton, Sir George Mackenzie, and Hume, 
and by all naturalists as well as jurists. It might be said 
truly, he would candidly admit, that every tup was a sheep, 
but he strenuously denied that every slieep was a tup, and so 

* I presume the whole minibor was very small. In the year 1853, having 
Silt as Chief Justice at Liverpool for a portion of the county of Lancaster, 
I tried 170 pri.soners ; and a few weeks after I attended this very court at 
Jedburgh as an amateur, when the Lord Justice Clerk held the assizes here. 
For the four entire counties there were only five prisoners. 



240 EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, of ewes and wethers. AVould it have been sufficient if the 
' libel had said a certain quadruped or a certain animal. No ! 



A.D. 1800. the living thing alleged to have been stolen must be indivi- 
dualised (as the best Crown writers call it) by a condescendence 
upon genus, species, and sex. Could you indict a man for 
stealing an ox, and convict him on evidence that he stole a 
cow ? or for stealing a goose, and show that he stole a gander, 
although there be a well-known maxim that " what is sauce 
for the goose is sauce for the gander " ? 

Lord Eskgrove took a full note of this argument, and was 
greatly shaken by it, but the Crown counsel brought him back 
by showing that "sheep" is the word used in the Act of 
Parliament, and that the libel was drawn in the form which 
had been constantly used since the Act passed. 
Q. Whether In the next case the learned counsel allowed that the libel 
sa-e boots-? ^^^ Sufficient ex facie in charging the jpannel with stealing 
" a pair of boots," but when it was referred to an assize, i. e. 
w^as submitted to the jury, he strenuously contended that his 
client was entitled to be acquitted, "for the articles stolen, 
when produced, appeared to be half hoots, and he argued that 
half hoots were not hoots any more than a half guinea is a 
guinea. So half a loaf is surely not equal to a whole loaf, 
although it is better than no bread." 

There was bere a general laugh, and Lord Eskgrove was 
much annoyed, for the truth suddenly darted into his mind 
that he was played upon. So he resolved to be firm and 
dignified, and, without calling upon the opposite counsel for 
an answer, he at once overruled the objection, saying, with 
much self-complacency, " I am of opinion that hoot is a nomen 
generale, comprehending a half boot. The distinction is 
between a half hoot and half a hoot. The moon is always the 
moon, although sometimes she is the half moon." His lord- 
ship A\ as dearer to himself by this display of logical acuteness, 
and looked round for applause. 
How far "^'^^^ ^^^^X <^ther trial at this assize, of which any authentic 

ebricty inny account has reached me, was that of a man indicted for a 
for a hiKs- violent assault upon his wife. Brougham set up as a defence 
ban.i beat- ^j^.^^ ^^j^^.j^ ^1^^ blows Were inflicted the husband and wife were 

ing his wito. i.ii 'Pii 11 

both drunk with whisky, which the wife had purchased by 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 241 

pawning her clothes, and had admhiistered between them in CHAP, 
equal shares, till they were both much excited, when she pro- 



voked him by challenging him to dance a huasome reel with a.d. i800. 
her, and tannting him that he could no longer keep on his 
legs, while she could exhibit all the graces of the " highland 
fling." The learned counsel arguendo admitted that, " gene- 
rally speaking ebriety is no defence in point of law against a 
criminal charge," but he took the distinction that " here the 
wife, the party alleged to be injured, was the causa catisans — 
ipsa doli fabricatrix, artifex et particeps, or in the language 
of the Scottish law art and jpart, so that the maxim applied 
' volenti non fit injuria.' " This point was urged by Brougham 
in a speech nearly an hour long, delivered with much 
vehemence and seeming sincerity. 

Lord Eskgrove at first suspected that this was another 
attempt to play upon him, but gradually felt misgivings lest 
there should be something in it, and called upon the Advocate 
Depute, who conducted the prosecution, for an answer. He 
was soon emboldened to overrule the defence, when reminded 
that the " panneV was indicted for a breach of the public 
peace, that the King — by the Lord Advocate, the public pro- 
secutor — and not the wife, was the true party complaining, 
and that the circumstances relied upon could not amount to 
a plea in bar, although they might operate in mitigation 
of punishment. 

Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, from whom I have the memo- 
rabilia of this assize at Jedburgh, gives me no further parti- 
culars of the trials, but says : — 

" Brougham continued to persecute my poor old relative Lord Brougham's 
Eskgrove, whom he nearly tormented to death ; about this time pt;ceiitrici- 
his conduct was so eccentric that he was supposed to have shewn 
a slight tendency to insanity, and his friends were very uneasy 
about him." 

The worthy baronet then mentions some instances of his 
eccentricity during the circuit, sucli as taking to wear spec- 
tacles, on tlie suggestion that he had suddenly become short- 
sighted ; of liis riding away from the circuit town upon the 
horse of a friend, invito domino, and of his having thrown 
some tea over a young lad\', for which he was called per- 

VOL. VIII. R 



242 EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, sonally to account ; but I forbear to enter into the details of 
such stories, which rest only on rumour, and which might 



A.D. 1800- probably be exjolained by an exuberance of animal spirits 
'^^^''^' and a love of frolic. 

When Brougham returned to Edinburgh from the circuit 
he fell ill, and was for some weeks confined to the house, suffer- 
ing from a great depression of spirits, supposed to be brought 
on by over- excitement ; but he soon re-appeared, as cheerful, 
elastic, vigorous, enterprising, and indefatigable as ever. 

He was now appointed by the Faculty to the annual office 
of " Civil Law Examinator " of candidates to be admitted to 
the degree of advocate. But these examinations seem to have 
become merely farcical. It was the duty of the Examinator 
to assign to each candidate a Title in the Digest in which he 
was to be publicly examined, and that which Brougham 
uniformly chose was. Dig. Lib. xxv. Tit. 4, "De Ventre 
Inspiciendo." * 

Without finally abandoning the profession of the law as a 
refuge, and feeling confident that he could safely retreat 
upon it if necessary, he now chiefly devoted himself to lite- 
rature, and sought renown by writing a book to rival Adam 
Smith's great treatise on political economy. Tlie Scotch 
advocates united law and literature with brilliant success ; t 
whereas in England a barrister who writes a play, a novel, or 
a history, renounces all hope of professional advancement. 
His book on Brougham took for his subject, " The Colonial Policy of the 
Pdify'oT'^^ European Nations," and he worked upon it with great earnest- 
European ness for several months. The labour of a life might have 
been expended in doing it justice, but he had not the patience 
and perseverance which produced the ' Wealth of Nations.' 

* This appears from a newspaper controversy carried on in the year 182S, in 
consequence of Bronghara, while commenting in the House of Commons on a 
trial at Lancaster, in which the now Presiilent Mac Neill was examined as 
a witness, having reflected on Scotch Advocates as being ignorant of the Civil 
liaw. Professor Brown took np the cause of his countrymen, and severely 
retaliated ujion tlicir accuser. See 'Remarks on the Study of the Civil Law, 
oecasionctd by I\Ir. Brougham's late attack on the Sct)ttish Bar,' by James 
Brown, TiL.D., Advocate. Fidinburgh, Adam Black, 1828. 

t Lord Jetfny and Sir Walter Scott may be cited as examples. The latter 
continued in the legal profession all his life, and while writing '"Marmion " and 
the ' Wavcrlcy Novels,' held the olllco of Clerk of Session, and was Sheriff or 
Judge for the county of Selkirk. 



Matious 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 243 

He wrote currente calamo, and althougli probably no other CHAP, 
man could Lave written so large and so good a book in so ' 



sbort a time, it was destined to a rather obscure career, and a.d, isoo- 
but for the fame subsequently acquired by the author, which ^^^^' 
reflects some interest upon it, long ere now it would have 
fallen into complete obKvion. 

Never at a loss for materials, or stopping long to digest 
those which he had collected, and not very anxious about 
succinctness or perspicuity, his great difficulty in composing 
his work was, whether he should make it wear a Whig or a 
Tory aspect. In Scotland party politics now ran very high, 
and no man wrote a sermon, or a treatise upon algebra, with- 
out showing whether he approved or condemned the French 
Bevolution — whether he was a Pittite or a Foxite. Brougham 
had imbibed highly conservative principles from his uncle, 
Principal Kobertson, but these had been much shaken by 
some of his companions in the Speculative Society, who were 
inclined to the extremes of democracy. He himself wavered 
much, and from time to time took the opposite sides with 
equal violence. In his first appearance before the public as an 
author, he resolved to assume the rare character of political 
neutrality. Nevertheless I think a slight leaning to the 
Tory side is disclosed by him. I have heard it stated 
that at this time he was (as any person might well be) an 
enthusiastic admirer of the eloquence and heroic spirit of 
Pitt the younger, and that he would have been extremely 
happy, on proper encouragement, to have enlisted under the 
banner of the " Heaven-born Minister." There certainly is 
nothing in the book which could have marred such prospects, 
if he entertained them, while it expressed no sentiment which 
might not be adopted by a good conservative liberal. 

Many of the Colonial questions which he discusses have 
ceased to retain any interest, and the principle of self- 
government, upon which almost all our relations with the 
Colonies now turn, had not then been dreamed of. The 
author declares himself a decided enemy to the African 
slave-trade both for the sake of the slaves and their masters ; 
but in no part of this work do we discover the burnin< 
indignation against negro slavery as a status which he after 

R 2 



■t) 



244 



KEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 



CHAP. 
I. 

A.D. 1800- 

1803. 



' The Edin- 
burgh Re- 
view.' 



wards evinced, and several passages in it were quoted against 
him, during the struggle for slave emancipation in the West 
Indies, as evidence of his opinion of the natural inferiority 
and subjection of the coloured race to the white. Touching 
on general politics, he not only justifies the war which we 
were then carrying on against the French Eepublic and the 
First Consul, but, — in alluding to the horrors which had taken 
place in Paris and in the provinces under the name of libert)^, 
to the atheistical professions of the Jacobin leaders, to the 
aggressive principles acted upon by the revolutionary govern- 
ments, and to the anarchy and oppression which revolution 
had produced in France, and which threatened to overrun all 
Europe, — he concealed not his opinion that the very fact of 
the existence of so great a poHtical nuisance gave the 
" vicinage " a right to interfere to have it ahated. 

If he was at this time a little dazzled by the brilliant 
chivalry of Burke, or if from interested motives he vacillated 
between rival factions, circumstances soon occurred which 
decidedly carried him over to the Liberal side, and kept him 
there above thirty years. 

In the end of the year 1801, Sydney Smith, along with 
Jeffrey, Horner, John Murray, and several other young and 
enthusiastic Whigs, formed the bold design of reforming the 
age by a new Keview, to be published quarterly, and to ct)ntaiii 
more lengthy, weighty, witty, and pungent articles than had 
ever appeared in any periodical publication. The scheme 
was first concocted in a room on the eighth or ninth story 
or flat of a house in Buccleuch Place, then the residence of 
Jeffrey, and instead of the motto ultimately adopted from 
Publius Syrus, " Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur," it 
was proposed to take the line from Virgil's first * Eclogue,' 
" Teiiui musam meditamur avena." " We cultivate the Muse, 
living on a little oatmeal.'' 

The arrangement for this celebrated periodical had been 
originally made without the privity of Brougham. A proposal 
that he should be invited to join the association was long- 
resisted by Sydney Smith, from " a strong impression of 
Brougham's indiscretion and rashness." At last there was 
a vote in his favour, partly from the hope of advantage from 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 245 

his vigorous co-operation, and partly from dread of his CHAP, 
enmity if he should be excluded. He joyfully accepted the ' 



offer, and vowed obedience. But he soon caused regrets and a.d. isoo- 
misgivings by his waywardness. In a letter dated the 9th of ^^^^' 
April, 1802, Jeffrey writes to Horner respecting the new 
Associate : — 

*' I proposed two or three books that I thought w^ould suit him : 
he answered with perfect good humour that he had changed his 
view of our plan a little, and rather thought now that he should 
decline to have any connection wdth it." 

Nevertheless he soon again changed his mind, and Horner, 
in a letter dated the 1st of September, 1802, respecting the 
expected appearance of the first number, says : — 

" Jeffrey has written three or four excellent papers, and 
Brougham is now an efficient and zealous member of the party. 
Brougham has selected from the ' Philosophical Transactions ' 
Herschell's discovery of the sympathy betweeu the spots of the 
sun and the prices of wheat in heading market." 

On the 10th of October, 1802, the first number of the Erougham'; 
*Blue and Buff' actually appeared, with three articles from tTJJ^'io^iie 
Brougham's pen ; Art. 23, on ' Wood's Optics ; ' Art. 24, on fi'st num- 

* Acerbi's Travels ; ' and Art. 27, on the ' Crisis of the Sugar 
Colonies.' * 

I need not mention the prodigious success of the publi- 
cation. Brougham, ascribing this to his own contributions, 
was so much pleased that he almost overwhelmed the editor 
with his help, and, like Bottom the Weaver, he wished 
himself to play all the parts, — criticising, one after another, 
works on chemistry, surgery, divinity and strategy. Each 
number contained an article discussing the most exciting- 
political question of the day, zealously taking the Whig side. 
This Brougham avoided till, in 1803, he had published his 

* Colonial Policy.' t After the appearance of this work ho 

* It has been said, on tlie authority of a pretended letter from Lord Jeftrcy 
to Mr. Cliamljers, that Brougham did not contribute to the first tliree numb-.Ts ; 
but my infonnation must be correct, as 1 have it in a letter under the hand 
of Lord [Murray, one of the founders, which now lies before me. 

t Jeftriy, in a letter to an American, dated 2nd July, 1803, shows the light 
in which Brougham was then beheld in Edinburgh : *' Mr. Brougham, a (jreat 
iiintliematician, lias published a book on the Colonial I'olicy of Eurojic. wliich 
all you Amuricaus should read." 



216 



EEIGX OF GEOEGE lir. 



CHAP. 
I. 



A.D. 1803- 
1805. 



' English 
Bards and 
Scotch Ke- 
viewers.' 



frankly cast in his lot with the Liberals, although well aware 
how dreary their prospects then were under the despotism of 
Henry Dundas. Thenceforth he courted opportunities for 
political discussion, and was of essential service in enlighten- 
ing the public mind. In this department he was moderate 
and constitutional, displaying that dislike of radicalism which 
has always honourably distinguished him. 

In criticising books, however, seeing that the tranchant or 
" slashing " style was so much relished, he indulged in it to 
an excess which not only tortured his victims but alarmed 
his colleagues. Hence Lord Byron's onslaught — his ' English 
Bards and Scotch Keviewers' being produced by Brougham's 
contemptuous notice of ' Hours of Idleness.' The poor editor 
bore the brunt, as when obliged to fight Tom Moore at Chalk 
Farm : — 

"Health to great Jeffrey ! Heaven preserve his life, 
To flourish on the fertile shores of Fife, &c." 

The only blame that could truty be imputed to Jeffrey was 
that he had granted his imprimatur for the censure of Lord 
Byron's first poetical efforts, and this censure, although very 
bitter, may w^ell be justified. The noble poet does not 
illustrate the maxim that " the boy is father of the man ;" 
for * Childe Harold ' has none of the lineaments of the vain, 
petulant, presumptuous stripling portrayed in ' The Hours of 
Idleness.' Though the cldef onslaught was on Jeffrey, 
Brougham was not spared in the satire : — 

" Yet mark one caution, ere thy next Keview 
Spread its liglit wings of saftron and of blue, 
Beware lest blundering Brougham destroy the sale, 
Turn beef to bannocks, cauliflowers to kail." 

Lord Byron's wrath is said to have been chiefly inflamed 
by the grave judicial sentence overruling his plea of infancy. 

" The law upon this point we hold to be perfectly clear. It 
is a plea available only to the defendant ; no plaintiff can offer 
it as a Mippleiuentary ground of action. Thus if any suit could 
be brought against Lord Byron for the purpose of compelling 
him to pay into Court a certain quantity of poetiy, and judgment 
were given against him, it is highly probable that an exception 
would be taken were he to deliver for poetry the contents of this 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 247 

Toliime. To this lie might plead minority ; but as he now makes CHAP, 
a voluntary tender of the article, he has no right to sue on that ' 

ground for the price in good current praise, should the goods be ^ ^ i803- 

unmarke table." 1805. 

But although Byron had little cause to complain of the Brougham's 
critique on the ' ' Hours of Idleness,' and he successfully Professor 
retaliated upon the assailant, there were other instances in ^^^^g- 
which Brougham as a reviewer recklessly pronounced unde- 
served censure, and fatally crushed rising merit. His most 
distinguished victim was Professor Young, who had in a very 
able publication explained the phenomena of light on the 
theory of Undulation, in opposition to that of material rays. 
Among other experiments, he had described one of stopping 
the rays wliich passed on one side of a thin card or wire ex- 
posed to a sunbeam admitted into a dark chamber, and 
which was found to obliterate the internal bands formed in 
its shadow whenever the light passed freely on both sides of 
it. Brougham, unable to explain away the result, if the 
experiment were truly made, in a very rash and flippant 
manner denied the accuracy of the experiment without 
repeating it : — 

"The fact is, we believe, the experiment was inaccurately 
made ; and we have not the least doubt that if carefully repeated, 
it will be found either that the rays when inflected cross each 
other and thus form fringes, each portion on the side opposite 
to the point of its flection, or that in stopping one portion Dr. 
Young in fact stopped both portions, a thing extremely likely, 
where the hand had only one-thirtieth of an inch to move in, 
and quite sufficient to account for all the fringes disappearing at 
once from the shadow." 

The article was hailed as a complete refutation of the 
Undulatory Theory, and Dr. Young was covered with ridicule. 
He published a pamphlet in reply, in which, when he came 
to the experiment gratuitously explained away by awkward 
manipulation, he says : — 

" The Tieviower has here afforded me an opportimity for a 
triiinipli as gratifying as any triumph can be where an enemy 
is so contemptible. Conscious of inability to explain the experi- 
ment, too ungenerous to confess that inability, and too idle to 



248 EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP, repeat the experiment, he is compelled to advance the supposi- 
tion that it was incorrect, and to insinuate that my hand may 



D 180^- ^^^i-^y ha^'6 erred through a space so narrow as one-thirtieth of 
1805. an inch. But the truth is, that my hand was not concerned ; 

the screen was placed on a table and moved mechanically 
forwards with the utmost caution. The experiment succeeded 
in some circumstances M'hen the breadth of the object was 
doubled and tripled. Let him make the experiment, and then 
deny the result if he can." 

If this pamphlet had been read, it must have vindicated 
the philosopher, and covered the critic with shame. But 
such was then the supposed infallibility of the ' Edinburgh 
Keview,' that there was no appeal from its decision ; and 
Peacock, in his 'Life of Dr. Young,' asserts that of the 
Keply one copy, and one copy only, was sold.* The fact 
undoubtedly is that for many years Dr. Young was considered 
a sciolist and a charlatan. At last he was taken up by the 
French savans, and his theory of undulation is now almost 
universally adopted. 

* Vol. i. p. 182. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 249 



CHAPTEE 11. 

FROM HIS EEMOYAL TO ENGLAND TO THE DEATH OF 
GEOEGE III. — 1805-1820. 

If Brougham had continued to reside in Scotland, an:] had CHAP, 
devoted himself to his profession there, he no doubt would ^_ 



ere Jong have been in good practice, and he probably He resolves 
would have been in due time Dean of Faculty, Lord Advo- [j^^j^g^i^t" 
cate, and Lord President of the Court of Session. He had the English 
existed near a quarter of a century before his ambition soared 
to loftier official distinctions, although it must be borne in 
mind that he had always high aspirations in literature and 
science. But the favourable impression which he had made 
as often as he had enjoyed an opportunity of speaking in 
public, created real discontent in his mind, and he thought 
he was fitter to succeed Lord Chancellor Loughborough than 
Lord President Sir Islay Campbell. Horner was now studying 
for the English bar, and Brougham could not brook the idea 
of a schoolfellow, a brother advocate and brother Edinburgh 
Keviewer, having in prospect such a noble career, whil« he 
himself was limited to comparative obscurity. He never had 
any misgivings as to his own powers to enter into competition 
with English lawyers; and his confidence in himself was 
considerably increased by a view he had of their performances 
when engaged at the bar of the Plouse of Lords as counsel for 
Lady Essex Kerr, in an ajtpeal from the Court of Session. 
Measuring himself by the standard of English excellence 
then presented to him, his dimensions were greatly expanded 
in his own estimate. 

Before bidding adieu to Edinburgh lie entered himself of a.d. 1803. 
Lincoln's Inn, attracted as well by the superior lustre of that ^'^ '^ 
Society as by a liberal regulation of the benchers, whereby T.incoin's 
members of the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland were ^""' 
placed on the same footing as graduates of the English 



250 



EEIGX OF GEOEGE III. 



CHAP. 
II. 



A.D. 1805. 



He comes 
to reside in 
London. 



Universities, in not being required to make any pecuniary 
deposit, and being entitled to be called to the bar at the end 
of three years from their admission.* 

For two years longer he continued to make Edinburgh his 
usual residence, taking care to be in London five days each 
term that he might eat dinners in the hall, — the only requisite 
training for the English bar. At last he transferred his 
domicile to the southern metropolis, and thenceforth he 
wished it to be forgotten that he had been born and bred in 
Scotland, and that to Scotland he owed the education which 
enabled him to excel so many senior wranglers and double- 
classmen of Cambridge and Oxford. Although the Scottish 
accent has continued to stick closely to him, and to betray 
his origin, he now began to sneer at Scotland and Scotchmen, 
u.nable to resist the temptation of raising a laugh by repeating 
some trite jest at their expense. Yet in his heart he had 
a warm affection for what must be considered his native 
country, and when he speaks his sincere sentiments he is 
always loud in upholding the superiority of the law and 
literature of Scotland. 

fie supplied himself with a copy of ' Coke upon Littleton/ 
but found himself unable to apply to it with energy, as he 
had formerly done to * Craig de Feudis.' Hence it was only 
pro re nata that he was ever at all acquainted with the 
subtleties of the law of real property in England, although he 
really was a very respectable Scotch feudalist, and he had a 
good notion of a me vel de me, and of the " fettering clauses." 
He now spent the greatest part of his mornings in writing 
articles for the ' Edinburgh Keview,' f and of his evenings in 

* " Lincoln's Inn, 1803.— Henry Brougham, of the Fnculh' of Advocates in 
Scotland, Esiinire, Eldest Son of Henry Bioughani of Brougham Hall in the 
County of Westmorland, Esquire, is admitted into the Society of this Inn, the 
14th day of November, in the 44th year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord 
George the 3rd by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain 
and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, and in the year of our Lord 1803, 
and hath thereupon paid to the use of tiiis Society the smu of Three pounds 
three shillings and four pence. 

"Admitted by 

*' Sp. Perceval, Treasurer." 

t " Glad in Ids vacant moments to renew 

His did aequaintjvnco with tlie (Jreat Review." 
But it afforded to him at tiiis time subsistence us well as anmsement. 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 251 

attending the gallery of the House of Commons, dining with CHAP. 
Whig peers, and lounging at Brookes's Club. Lord Cockburn, ' 



the biographer of Jeffrey, told me the following anecdote, a.d. 1805. 
for the truth of which he said he could vouch : — " Brougham, 
after he came to reside in London, wrote to Jeffrey, saying 
that he had immediate occasion for 1000^., which must be 
remitted to him by return of post, and for which there should 
be value delivered for the blue and huff. The lOOOZ. was 
duly remitted, and in the course of six weeks Brougham sent 
down articles on a vast variety of subjects, which made up an 
entire number of the ' Edinburgh Eeview,' one of these being 
on a ' New Mode of performing the Operation of Lithotomy,' 
another upon ' The Dispute as to Light between the Emis- 
sionists and the Undulationists,' and a third on the * Music of 
the Chinese.'"* 

He calculated with absolute certainty on getting almost 
immediately into Parliament, and he wished to become 
familiar with the aspect and the ways of the lower House. 
Among givers of good dinners there was a competition to His great 
have Brouo^ham at their tables. Contrivins: to make it ^^^^f ^^ 

o o society in 

appear a favour conferred on them to accept their invitations, London. 
he joined the AYhig symposia with little reluctance. Although 
he frequented Brookes's he strictly abstained from the deep 
gaming which still prevailed there ; but he would freely 
partake of the hot suppers wliich nightly smoked for those 
who had previously partaken of a luxurious dinner, and after 
large potations of mulled claret he would walk home to his 
chambers by daylight. At no period of his life was he justly 
liable to the charge sometimes brought against him of 
habitual intemperance. 

Soon after he settled in London he was made free of Hol- 
land House, which then, and for many years after, presented 
the most agreeable society in Europe.! By a natural instinct 

* I afterwards asked Jeffrey if this was true? — His answer was " I will not 
vouch for its literal truth, but Brouj^ham ecrtiiinly was wonderful for his 
vigour and variety." In a letter of Horner to Jetfrey, dated 11th January, 
]805 (Life of Homer, vol. i. p. 278), lie writes : — '* You were relieved, I trust, 
from all dirti'-ulties by the arrivul of Brougham's packet. It would be new 
indeed, if anything connected with Brougham were to fail in despatch. He 
is the surest and most voluminous among the sons of men." 

t See Mac-.iulay's elo(|ueut and accurate description uf this in tlic ' Kdinburgh 



252 EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, which taught him his own relative vahie he seemed, from his 
' first introduction to men of the highest birth and the most 
A.D. 1805. distinguished position, to feel himself on an entire equality 
with them, and, without any approach to Yulgarity or im- 
pertinence, he treated them with the utmost familiarity. 
While he could address himself with much dexterity to 
the amour 'pro^re of those with whom he conversed, he 
betrayed occasionally his power of sarcasm, and he was 
courted both on account of what was pleasant about him and 
wdiat was formidable. As he advanced, in consequence, he 
ruled more by fear than by love ; but when envy and rivalry 
did not interfere, his amiable qualities again shone out ; he 
was almost always obliging, and sometimes he was actually 
friendly. 

In spite of a secret distrust of him, which was generated in 
the minds of almost all who knew him by his occasional 
forgetfulness of promises, and incorrectness in his statement 
of facts, he was rapidly rising from the ground, and flying 
through the mouths of men. 

Review,' for July, 1841 : — " The time is coming wben perhaps a few old men, 
the last survivors of our genemtion, will in vain seek amidst new streets and 
squares and railway stations for the site of that dwelling which was in their 
youth the favourite resort of wits and beauties, of painters and poets, of scholars, 
philosophers, and statesmen. They will then remember with strange tenderaess 
many objects once familiar to them, the avenue and the termce, the busts 
and the paintings, the carvings, the grotesque gihUng, and the enigmatical 
mottoes. With peculiar fondness they will recall that venerable chamber, in 
which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blended 
with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room. 
They will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded with the varied learning 
of many lands and many ages, and those portraits in which were preserved the 
features of the best and wisest Englishmen of two generations. They will 
recollect how many men who liave guided the politics of Europe, who have 
moved great assemblies by reason and eloquence, who have put life into bronze 
and canvass, or who have left to posterity things so written as it shall not 
willingly let them die, were there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest 
in the society of the most splendid of cajutals. They will remember the 
peculiar character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent and 
accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They wdl remember 
how tlie last debate was discussed in one comer, and the last comedy of Scribe 
in another; wliile Wilkie gazed with modest admiration on Sir Jusliua's 
Jiaretti ; while Mackintosh tmned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation ; 
wiiile Talleyrand narrated his conversations with liarras at the Luxembourg, or 
Ijis ride with Lannes over the field of Austcrlilz. Tliey Avill remember, alK>ve 
all, the grace ami the kindness, far more ndinimble than grace, witli wliich the 
])rincely hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed.'" 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 253 

Nothing had helped him. more in his ascent than his CHAP, 
connection with a party called " The Saints," having William ' 



Wilberforce at their head. Their war cry was, "Abolition of a.d. i805. 
the slave trade, and of slavery ^ They held that the negro 
race were fellow Christians and fellow men, all descended 
from Adam and Eve, and quite equal to the whites in faculties 
as well as destiny. ^ By embracing this doctrine, and by 
unremitted homage. Brougham gained the entire good-will of 
the Negro Liberator, and was proclaimed by him a gifted 
coadjutor in the holy cause. 

At this stage of his career it seemed as if Brougham's Feb.7,i806. 
lofty ambition were to have very early gratification. The poweroT*** 
death of Mr. Pitt was followed by the sudden advent " ^ ^^ ^^^ 

Talents. 

of the Whigs to power, and the new Government Avas to 
comprehend ^'All the Talents." Brougham naturally sup- 
posed that it could not deserve the title conferred upon it 
while he was excluded, and he considered his claim to an 
appointment strengthened by a pamphlet which he published, 
entitled ' The State of the Nation,' in which he pointed out 
very forcibly the blessings to be expected from the auspicious 
change. He received in return fair words and the hope of 
future advancement, but neither place nor seat in Parliament ; 
and the only mark of favour he obtained was to be sent as a Brougham's 
sort of secretary to Lord St. Vincent and Lord Kosslyn, on Portugal. 
a short mission which they undertook to Portugal. He ever 
after spoke with great admiration of Lord St. Vincent's 
abilities as a politician, and he remained on the most friendly 
terms with Lord Rosslyn, even when the current of party 
politics carried them in different directions. 

Soon after Brougham's return to England the Whigs were ^^'"^'^ -"^' 
banished from office, the party being destined for many lon^- 
years to languish in the ungenial regions of opposition with- 
out (yourt favour and without popular support. Their speedy 
restoration, however, was then expected, as they had been 
most unjustly turned out for attempting to procure a very 
harmless relaxation of the penal code against the Eoman 
Catholics, and Brougham unhesitatingly and zealously re- 
mained true to his colours. 

The gigantic and incredible (unless miraculous) efforts 



254 EEIGX OF GEOKGE III. 

CHAP, which he then made to influence the public mind through 
' the press are thus described by Lord HoUand in his ' Memoirs 
A.D. 1807. of the Whig party' : — 

His efforts " We raised a subscription, the very day of the dissohition, 

Whic^s^ for the management of the press and the distribution of hand- 

when they bills. In the meanwhile the elections went much against us. 
were turned rpj^^ management of our press fell into the hands of Mr. Brougham. 
"With that active and able man I had become acquainted, 
through Mr. Allen, in 1805. At the formation of Lord Grenville's 
ministry he had written, at my suggestion, a pamphlet, called 
' The State of the Nation.' He subsequently accompanied Lord 
Kosslyn and Lord St. Vincent to Lisbon. His earl}^ connection 
with the Abolitionists had familiarized him with the means of 
circulating political papers, and given him some weight with 
those best qualified to co-operate in such an undertaking. His 
extensive knowledge and extraordinary readiness, his assiduity 
and habits of composition enabled him to correct some articles 
and to furnish a prodigious number himself. With partial and 
scanty assistance from Mr. Allen, myself, and two or three 
more, he, in the course of ten days, filled ever}^ bookseller's 
shop with pamphlets ; most London newspapers and all countr}'- 
ones without exception, with paragraphs ; and supplied a large 
portion of the boroughs throughout the kingdom with handbills, 
adapted to the local interests of the candidates : and all tending 
to enforce the principles, vindicate the conduct, elucidate the 
measures, or expose the adversaries of the Whigs." 

If all this be literally true, he must have exceeded all the 
exploits of ^'Wallace Wight" or "Jack the Giant Killer." 
His fertility, copiousness, energy, and perseverance in com- 
pleting a particular effort, certainly were most stupendous ; 
and he doubtless did more in these ten days than any other 
human being would have attempted. But lie had probably 
persuaded Lord Holland, who was very good-natured and a 
little credulous, that he had worked impossibilities. 

The crisis being over, Brougham saw that he must for a 
time become a professional man, and fit himself for practice 
by becoming possessed of at least a smattering of English law. 
Accordingly he submitted to tlie necessary drudgery of a 
special pleader's ofl[ice, and he became a pupil of jMr. Tindal, 
then practising under the bar — afterwards Chief Justice of 
the Court of Common Vhws. Here he formed an intimacy 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 255 

"with a brother pupil, James Parke, subsequently so famous CHAP, 
for technical lore and love of antiquated forms.* Following ' 



his example for a short time, Brougham condescended to copy a.d. isos. 
the " money counts," and from his wonderful quickness of 
perception he got a tolerable insight into the mysteries of 
special pleading. 

On the 22nd day of November, 1808, he was called to the He is caiipd 

T-, T 1 1 to the bar. 

English bar. 

Owing to his great reputation in societ}^, it was supposed 
by many that he would exceed Erskine in the rapidity of his 
rise, while the more judicious foresaw that the effect of his 
brilliant parts would be seriously obstructed by want of 
steadiness and discretion. 

Alas ! for a long while the favourable anticipations were in His bad 
no degree verified. Neither brief nor retainer came in, and g^stj^'' 
the world seemed quite unconscious of the great epoch which 
was supposed to have arrived in our forensic history. Term 
and sittings ended, and the voice of the modern Cicero, who 
was to unite law, philoso2Dhy, statesmanship, and eloquence, 
had not once been heard in Westminster Hall. He chose Goes the 
the Northern Circuit, where it might have been expected that circuit! 
a great sensation would have been created by the descendant 
of the Be Burghams, those mailed knights who had fought 
so bravely in Palestine, appearing in a wig and gown, ready 
to attack the oppressor, to defend the innocent, and to obtain 
redress for the wrongs of man, woman, and chikl. But he 
proceeded from York to Durham, from Durham to Newcastle, 
from Newcastle to Carlisle, from Carlisle to Appleby, and 
from Appleby to Lancaster, without receiving a guinea or 
even being called upon to defend a prisoner without a fee. 
Occasionally he must have had misgivings as to the step he 
had taken in leaving the Scottish bar, and he may have 
wished that he were again making wretched the lii'e of Lord 
Eskgrove, or raising a laugh against " the Fifteen " in the 
I^irliament House. His demeanour, however, was extremely 
amiable, and he made himself very popular with his brother 
barristers. They received him the more cordially when they 
found that the alarming apprehensions entertained of his 

* Aftcrwurds created Lord Weiislcydule. 



256 



KEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 



CHAP. 
II. 



A.D. 1808. 



Lord 

Eldon's 

misuomer. 



making a terrible foray upon them and carrying off all the 
business, proved groundless. He was duly admitted at the 
Grand Court, drank every toast with the usual solemnities, 
sang an appropriate song when required, and showed that 
in future he might be looked to as a valuable contributor 
to the " High Jinks " festivities of the meeting. 

Not until he had become a member of the House of 
Commons, and had acquired fame there as a debater, did he 
gain anything approaching to regular practice in courts of 
law. Occasionally he was employed where a splashing 
speech was wanted in an assault case or an action for slander, 
but it was soon remarked that he was more solicitous to gain 
distinction for himself than to succeed for his client ; he 
could not resist the temptation to make a joke at his client's 
expense ; he showed no tact in conducting a difficult case, 
and if he was a *' visrorous " he never was a " verdict-o:ettino' 
counsel."* 

His professional income at this time arose almost ex- 
clusively from Scotch appeals, in which he was employed at 
the bar of the House of Lords. It is a curious fact that he 
then drew the appeal case and argued for the appellant in 
Sheddeii v. Patrick, which he is now, after the lapse of half 
a century, wdth other ex-Chancellors, assisting Lord Chan- 
cellor Cranworth, who was then in petticoats, to rehear on 
the ground of fraud and collusion. 

Lord Eldon, who was almost uniformly courteous and kind 
to counsel, had at first a strong prejudice against Brougham, 

* This panegyric of being "a vigorous verdict-getting counsel" wns applied 
to Mr. Clarke, leader of the Midland Circuit, and was long well known in 
Westminster Hall. 

We have an account of Brougham's manner in banc, in a letter from Horner, 
written in 1812. After giving an exaggerated statement of Brougham's 
success at the bar. he says: — "I have bt-eu present at several arguments 
of his in banc, of which I should not, to say the truth, make a very high report, 
tliat is, in comparison of his powers and his reputation. Great reach and 
compass of mind he must ever display; and he shows much industry, too, 
ill collecting information ; but his arguments are not in the best style of 
legal reasoning. Precision ami clearness in the tletails, symmetry in tiu- 
putting of them together, an air of linish and unity in the whole, are the merits 
of that style, and there is not ono of tliese qualities in which ho is not vcrv 
defective. lint his d('Sull(M-y reasoning has nuich force in some part**, and 
mucli ingenuity in others." 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 257 

and used to annoy liim (it was supposed designedly) by CI-IAP. 
always calling him Mr. Bruffam. "De Burgham " might ' 

have sounded sweetly in his ear ; but amidst the winks .\.d. isos. 
and smiles of malicious bystanders who enjoyed his morti- 
fication, to be repeatedly addressed by a sound which, 
although the spelling of his name might phonetically justify 
it, was vulgar and obscure — this was not to be borne by a man 
of spirit. He therefore sent a message to the Lord Chan- 
cellor by Mr. Cowper, the assistant clerk, in rather angry 
terms, as if he had to notice a premeditated insult ; and, 
that there might be no mistake, wrote down in large round 
text the letters b r o o m, to mark the monosyllabic pro- 
nunciation, for he is nearly as much offended Avith " Bro — 
am " or " Broo — am " as with Bruffam itself. The Chancellor 
took the remonstrance in good part, and at the conclusion of 
the argument observed " every authority upon the question 
has been brought before us : New Brooms sweep clean." 

Now it was that I first came into professional rivalry witli Biougiiam 
Brougham, and at this stage of our career he greatly eclipsed '^"^ ^^^^' 
me. Hitherto, since I was called to the bar, I had been "po^^ the 
creeping on very slowly but steadily — •justifying or opposing together. 
bail — moving for judgment as in case of a nonsuit, or arguing 
a special demurrer turning upon whether a venue had not 
been improperly omitted in alleging a traversable fact. 
Suddenly I was called upon to appear as counsel at the bar 
of the House of Lords on behalf of Firmin De Tastet, a 
wealthy Spanish merchant, to oppose a bill, introduced by the 
Government as a great war measure against Napoleon, by 
preventing the exportation of Jesuits' bark from England to 
the continent for the supply of his armies then suffering 
from intermittent fever. My client had several cargoes of 
this medicine stored in England which, if this bill passed, 
would become a useless drug upon his hands. 

Ih'ougham at the same time was retained as counsel at the 
bar of both Houses for the Liverpool merchants who had 
petitioned against the Orders in Council, framed by way of 
retaliation for Napoleon's Berlin and j\Iilan decrees, which 
declared the British Isles in a state of blockade. 

My affair was soon over, as I had only one evening given 

vol. VIII. s 



258 EETGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP, me to examine my witnesses and to make my speeches ; 
' and I returned to my bail, my motions of course, and my 



A.D. 1808. special demurrers. Brougham's lasted six weeks, during 
whicli he may be said to have made his fortune. For many 
successive days, in both Houses, he examined a vast crowd of 
witnesses, and he delivered many most admirable speeches 
showing great knowledge of political economy and the details 
of trade, and inveighing in unmeasured terms against the 
false policy of the English government, by which not only 
neutral nations were grossly injured but our own commerce 
and manufactures were nearly ruined. The speeclies of 
counsel at the bar of either House are generally delivered to 
empty benches, bat Brougham spoke to crowded audiences, 
and hundreds were turned away every evening who could 
not gain access even to hear the broken murmurs of his 
eloquence. The petitioners were defeated and did not gain 
their object till 1812, when Brougham himself was a mem- 
ber of the House of Commons ; but from his eflforts in 
this case he acquired brilliant fame as an orator, and the 
certainty was established that he would make a figure in 
public life. 

Nevertheless, the next two years were very disheartening 
to him, and he complained that "he was going down in the 
world." He made little progress on his circuit, and he never 
had been employed in any great trial in Westminster Hall. 
He became discontented with the Whig leaders, and very 
clamorous against them, by reason that he had not yet 
been brought into the House of Commons. Under the un- 
rcformed system, an aspiring young man who attached hiin- 



Parliament. 



Brongham's 
resentment 
aojainst the 
Whigs for 
notbiinging 

him into sclf to either of the great parties in the State, who made 
himself useful, and was likely to do credit to it by liis 
oratorical powers, counted upon a seat in Parliament with 
as much confidence as upon an invitation to a political dinner 
from a Whig or Tory Lord, or a card to her Ladyship's 
assembly. Borough-mongers on each side had as many as 
eight or ten IMembers in the House of Commons. Those whose 
ambition it was to maintain and increase their importance 
and influence in their respective parties, were on the watch 
to pick up as recruits ndvcMilurous youths of the greatest 



LIFE OF LOKD BEOUGHAM. 259 

talent and promise. Brougham's chagrin was much ex- CHAP. 
asperated by the circumstance that a class-fellow, who had 



been both at school and college with him, who had been a.d. i808- 
called to the Scotch bar at the same time with him, who had ^^^^• 
been his fellow-labourer in the ' Edinburgh Review,' who 
had left Edinburgh about the same time to enter the pro- 
fession of the law in England, and wdio had likewise devoted 
himself to the Whigs, had been placed by them in the House 
of Commons four years ago, and at two successive general 
elections had, by aristocratic influence, been returned for a 
Whig borough. Francis Horner, — who though very inferior 
to Brougham in energy of character, had much more of 
prudence and of principle, — had been warmly befriended by 
the leaders of the Liberal party, and, if he had lived, would 
in all probability have been Prime Minister of England. 
Brougham looked on his success with jealousy and envy, and, 
■without any fault of Horner, all intimacy between them had 
ceased. Unfortunately, little confidence was reposed in the 
sincerity of Brougham's professed attachment to the Whig 
cause, and serious apprehensions were entertained that if 
he should acquire distinction in the House of Commons, he 
might turn his power and influence to some purpose of his 
own at variance with the policy of the party. Being thus 
fed only by civility, promises, and hopes, he at last threatened 
abruptly to leave the Whigs, and they, after due deliberation, 
came to the conclusion that he would be less formidable as a 
friend than as a foe. It luckily happened that at this time 
a Whig seat became vacant by the accession of Lord Henry 
Petty to the peerage on the death of his brother, the second 
Marquis of Lansdowne ; and it was determined that Brougham 
should be the new Member for the rotten borough of Camel- He becomes 
ford. The news being communicated to Hoi-ner by Allen, 
wlio lived with Lord and Lady Holland as their companion 
and secretary, the following answer was returned, disclos- 
ing much generosity on the part of Horner ; but at tlie 
same time a just sense of the failings of his former school- 
fellow. 



s 2 



]\Iembcr for 
Camellbrd. 



260 



EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 



CHAP. 
II. 



A.D. 1810. 



II is montli 
of silence. 



" Lincoln's Inn, Gth January, 1810. 
"Dear Allen, 

" I rejoice exceedingly at tlie news you give me of Brougham 
coming into Parliament; and I am pai-ticularly glad tliat Lord 
Holland has had so great a share in effecting it. Brougham 
never could have found a more fortunate moment for settiug out 
upon his career, vhich, though it may appear less brilliant at 
first, on account of the expectations which are formed of him, 
will be very speedily distinguished ; and upon the whole I 
would predict that, though he may very often cause irritation 
and uncertainty about him to be felt by those with whom he is 
politically connected, his course will prove, in the main, service- 
able to the true faith of liberty and liberal principles. For him 
personally it will be very fortunate if he has some probationary 
years to pass on the Opposition side of the House." 

Parliament meeting on the 23rd of January, a new writ 
was issued for the election of a burs-ess for the borouQ-h of 
Camelford, and in a few days afterwards " Henry Brougham, 
Esq., of Brougham Hall, in the County of ^Yestmorland," * 
was returned as duly elected. He had gone down to solicit 
the votes of the electors, but, unfortunately, we have no 
account of his canvass or of any of his hustings speeches 
on this occasion. He no doubt played his part of candidate 
for the first time very ably, as well as successfully, for he 
bad the faculty of making himself agreeable in all situations, 
and he could dexterously address himself to the sympathies 
of persons in every situation of life. The twenty paid electors 
of Camelford, when acting under the conge d'elire issued by 
the Lord of the Borough, were probably told, and nearly 
made to believe, that they were the most important, inde- 
pendent, and patriotic constituency in the kingdom. 

There was now keen speculation in the clubs and coteries 
of London respecting the maiden speech of the new Member. 
Prom his impetuous and impatient temperament, it was 
expected that he would burst out with a flaming oration the 
very night he took his scat. But, to astonish liis friends, 
and to prove to the world his forbearance and self-control, 
he had made a vow that ho would be silent for a month. 
Having actually kept this vow in the midst of many tempta- 

* 'London Gazette,' 5th Feb., ISIO. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 261 

tions to break it, he thought he had acquired a sufficient CHAP, 
character for taciturnity to last him during the rest of his ' 

life, and it was remarked that for the future he never was a,t>, i8io. 
in his place a whole evening in either House of Parliament 
without regularly or irregularly more than once taking part 
in the discussions. 

His first effort was considered a failure. The subject of His maideu 

- SD6Gcll 

debate was the Narrative of the Expedition to the Scheldt 
written by the Earl of Chatham, then a member of the 
Cabinet, and delivered by him to the King with a request 
that it might be kept secret. 

On the second night of the debate, Mr. Brougham rose to 5tii Marcii. 
support the resolution moved by Mr. AYhitbread, " that this 
proceeding on the part of the Earl of Chatham was uncon- 
stitutional." To the surprise of the House, to whom the 
propensities of the debutant were pretty generally known, 
his tone was mild, and not a single sarcastic observation 
dropped from his lips. Instead of dwelling upon the dis- 
astrous incidents of the Walcheren campaign, and denouncing 
the listless and supine disposition of the Commander-in-Chief, 
he strictly confined himself to the question, and tried logically 
to prove that this communication to the Sovereign by one of 
his ministers, without the knowledge of the others, was con- 
trary to the spirit of the constitution, which now makes all 
the members of the Cabinet jointly liable for the advice 
given by any of them. The following was the most elevated 
passage in the oration : — 

" What constitutes the breach of the constitution is the 
privacy with which the affair was conducted, coupled as it was 
with a request of secrecy. Now it may be, and, indeed, it 
undoubtedly is difficult for me to point out any particular Act of 
Parliament making this unanticipated course of conduct a 
bleach of the privileges or the practice of Parliament ; but I 
confidently appeal to the sound and established piinciples of 
which the constitution is made up, or rather which themselves 
form the constitution. Is it not necessary that the constitutional 
Ministers of the Crown shall communicate with each other 
constitutionally and confidentially on all public affairs? Is it 
not absolutely requisite for the harmony and completeness of all 
ministerial acts that they conduct the business of Government 



262 



REIGN OF GEORGE III. 



CHAP. 
II. 

A.D. 1810. 



His claims 
to the 
leadership 
of the 
Opposition. 



with united counsels, and mutual advice and co-operation ? In 
the present case, however, we find Lord Chatham separating 
himself from his colleagues, and tendering a statement merely to 
his Majesty, that is, giving his advice to his Sovereign, without 
consulting the other members of the administration. How can 
we consider his Majesty's Ministers as responsible for this 
private communication made by Lord Chatham ? If an expedi- 
tion be determined upon by a Cabinet, one Minister, under the 
influence of such a system, might suppose that the object in 
view was to be best attained by artillery, and give advice to 
that effect to his Sovereign; another by infantry; another, as 
in a late case, by a coup de main ; whilst another might give the 
preference to a troop of light-horse. Every one might have a 
different opinion, while the only point on which all would 
agree, would be that their advice should be kept snug in the 
possession of his Majesty. Can we suppose any state of confu- 
sion worse confounded, and, as it might be, more disastrous or 
absurd, than that which must result from such a state of minis- 
terial separation ? * 

The honourable and learned Member resumed his seat 
without a single cheer, to the disappointment of his friends, 
and the great relief of a considerable number of Members 
of rising or established reputation, who had dreaded the 
approach of a comet to set the world on fire. But he very 
speedily restored the confidence of friends, and the consterna- 
tion of rivals, by renouncing for ever affected mildness, and 
indulging without restraint his taste for vituperation. Before 
the end of his first session he had conquered a commanding 
position in the House of Commons, and had presented him- 
self as a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal party. 
George Ponsonby was acknowledged by the reguhxrly dis- 
ciplined Whigs as their chief; but he had not much brilliancy 
as an orator to counterbalance the disadvantages of being an 
Irishman and a lawyer, and, although he had been Lord 
Chancellor of Ireland, Brougham vilipended his authority, 
and was pleased with an opportunity of sneering at him. 
Kichard ]3rinsley Sheridan was still a Member of the House, 
but " the flaming patriot who scorched in the meridian was 
sinking mtcmperately to the West." He was no longer 



* IG Hansard. 7. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 263 

capable of addressing the HoQse till he had swallowed a CHAP, 
quart of brandy, and then his oratory consisted of a mixture ' 

of nauseous sentimentality and stale jests. Samuel Whit- a.d. isio. 
bread, nicknamed " Fermentation Sam " partly from his 
profession of a brewer, and partly from the ferment in 
his brains, though gravely pronounced "the pride of the 
democracy," was deficient in common sense and tact, and 
showed occasionally that want of self-control which drove 
him to a voluntary death. Sir Francis Burdett, long in the 
mouths of men, had never any higher ambition than to 
receive the plaudits of the mob, and to enjoy the distinction 
of being sent to the Tower of London. Henry Grattan, 
notwithstanding his prodigious Irish reputation and con- 
siderable success in the Imperial House of Commons, had 
never thoroughly taken root there, and was now withering 
away. Tierney had seriously damaged his reputation by 
taking office under Lord Sidmouth, and, although he had 
considerable influence from his excellent good sense and p^- 
spicuous elocution, he was considered by very few fit to be 
a party leader.* Horner was getting on, being the first man 
who ever made the doctrines of political economy intelligible 
to the House of Commons.! x^lthough very speedily sur- 
passed by Brougham as a debater, had he survived I make 
no doubt that he would have regained his ascendancy. The 
only other distinguished Member on the Liberal side was 
Eomilly, who was much esteemed for his pure principles 
and high sense of honour, but was looked upon as somewhat 
impracticable, and his Genevese notions on religion and 
politics were always unpalatable in England. 

The leading men on the other side were Castlereagh, 
Canning, Perceval, and Gibbs the Attorney General. With 
any or all of these Brougham was ever ready to enter the 
lists as occasion required. His keenest contests were with 

♦ I have often heard him deeply regret that he had left the bar, and he 
used to tell me that no lawyer ought to come into the House of Commons till 
he ha.s fair pretenbions to be Solicitor General. 

t I'itt, the younger, had a considerable smattering of that science ; but Fox 
and Sheridan and Whitbread and Grey knew as little of it as Lord Chatham 
himself, who swore that 'Mie never would allow the colonies eveu to manu- 
facture a hob- nail for themsclvcjs." 



264 EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP. Canning, but, notwithstanding great sharpness of language, 
' there was always a friendly feeling between them, and when 



A.D. 1810. Canning was at last Prime Minister, Brougham, without 

office, proved his warmest supporter. 
He devotes The subject to which the member for Camelford first 
j^egro shewed his devotion was Negro Slavery; and by the suc- 

siaveiy. cessful treatment of this he suddenly raised himself to a 
high position. Wilberforce, satisfied with his share in the 
glory of the act for abolishing the English slave trade with 
Africa, and now declining in pliysical vigour, was willing to 
surrender to his new coadjutor the task of commencing and 
carrying through the further measures which were deemed 
necessary for giving full effect to the views of the abolitionists. 
During the present century there has not been any instance 
of the rank of leading member of the House of Commons 
being attained so rapidly as by Brougham. Within four 
months from the day when he took his seat, without being- 
supposed to be guilty of any presumption, he brought forward 
1 5th June, a motion for an address to the Crown on the subject of slavery, 
as if he had long been the acknowledged chief of a party. 
This he proposed in an admirable speech of which I can only 
give a few detached passages. 

" The question was, whether any, and what measures could be 
adopted in order to watch over the execution of the sentence of 
condemnation which Parliament had, with a singular unanimity, 
pronounced upon the African slave trade? It was then four 
years since Mr. Fox had made his last motion upon the subject, 
pledging the House to the abolition of the traffic, and beseeching 
his Majesty to use all his endeavours for obtaining the con- 
currence of foreign Powers. Early in the next year Lord 
Grenville and Lord Grey, inferior only to Mr. Wilberforce 
(unfortunately now absent from severe indisposition) in their 
services to the cause, gave the Parliament an opportunity of 
redeeming its pledge, by introducing the Abolition Bill. That 
measure, which had formerly met so many obstacles, whether, 
as some were willing to believe, from the slowness with which 
truth works its w\ay, or, as others were prone to suspect, from 
the want of zeal in its official supporters, now experienced none 
of the inipcdinicnts that hud hitherto retarded its progress; far 
from encountering any formidable difficulties, it passed through 



A.D. 1810. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 265 

Parliament almost without opposition ; and one of the greatest CHAP, 
and most disputed measures was at length carried by larger 
majorities perhaps than were ever known to divide upon any 
contested question. The friends of the abolition, however, never 
expected that any legislative effort would at once destroy the 
slave trade ; they were aware how obstinately such a noxious 
weed would cling to the soil where, it had taken root. Still 
they had underrated the difficulties to be encountered. They 
had not made sufficient allowance for the resistance which the 
real interests of those actually engaged in the traffic, and 
the supposed interests of the colonists, would oppose ; they had 
not formed an adequate estimate of the wickedness of the slave 
trader, or of the infatuation of the planter. "While nothing has 
been done to circumscribe the foreign slave trade, this abomin- 
able traffic is still carried on by British subjects." 

He then proceeded at great length and with masterly 
ability to prove these assertions from papers before the House. 
Witli respect to our own countrymen he said : — 

"For accomplishing this detestable purpose, all the various 
expedients had been adopted which the perverse ingenuity of 
unprincipled avarice could suggest. Yessels were fitted out at 
Liverpool as if for innocent commerce with Africa. The goods 
peculiarly used in the slave trade were carefulh^ concealed, so as 
to elude the reach of the port officers. The platforms and bulk- 
heads, which distinguished slave ships, were not fitted and 
fixed until the vessel got to sea and cleared the Channel, — when 
the carpenters set to work, and adapted her for the reception of 
slaves. Lurking in some dark corner of the ship, was almost 
always to be found a hoary slave trader — an experienced captain, 
who, having been trained up in the slave business from his early 
3'ears, now prowled about as a super-cargo, helping the gang of 
man-stealers by his wiles, both to escape detection, and to push 
their iniquitous adventure. But a few months ago, in the very 
river which washed the walls of that House, not two miles from 
the spot where they now sat, persons, daring to call themselves 
English merchants, had been detected in the act of fitting out a 
vessel of great burthen for the purpose of tearing seven or eight 
hundred wretched beings from Africa, and carrying them 
through the unspeakable horrors of the middle passage to 
endless bondage and misery in the sands and swamps of Brazil. 
At one port of this country six vessels had only just been fitted 
out by a similar course of base frauds for the same trade — or 



266 EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, rather the same series of detestable crimes. Three years havins: 

II . . -' & 

' elapsed since this abominable traffic had ceased to be sanctioned 



AD 1810 ^^y ^^^® -^^^ ^^ ^^® land, he thanked God he might now indulge 
in expressing feelings, which deference to that law might before 
have rendered it proper to suppress. Our indignation might 
now be hurled against those who still dared to trade in himian 
flesh — not only practising the frauds of common smugglers, but 
committing crimes of the deepest dye. It was not commerce, 
but crime, that they were driving. Of commerce, that most 
honourable and useful pursuit, whose object is to humanise and 
pacify the world — so inseparably connected with freedom, and 
good-will, and fair dealing — he deemed too highly to endure 
that its name should, by a strange perversion, be prostituted to 
the use of men who lived by treachery, rapine, torture, and 
murder ! When he said murder, he spoke literally and advisedly. 
He meant to use no figurative phrase ; and he knew he was 
guilty of no exaggeration. He was speaking of the worst form 
of that Clime. For ordinary murders there might be some 
excuse. Eevenge might have arisen from excess of feelings, 
honourable in themselves. A murder of hatred or cruelt}'^ or 
mere blood thirstiness, could only be imputed to a deprivation of 
reason. But here we have to do with cool, deliberate, mercenary 
murder — nay, worse than this, for the ruffians who go upon the 
highway, or the pirates who infest the seas, at least expose their 
persons, and by their courage throw a kind of false glare over 
their crimes. But these wretches dare not do this ; they employ 
others as base, but less cowardly than themselves ; they set on 
men to rob and kill, in whose spoils they are willing to share, 
though not in their dangers. Traders or merchants do they 
presume to call themselves? and in cities like Loudon and 
Liverpool, the very creations of honest trade ! Give them their 
right name at length, and call them cowardly suborners of 
piracy and mercenary murder. Deprive these miscreants of the 
means of safe criminality, and society may be purified and 
avenged. Some of them will naturally go on the highway ; 
others will betake themselves to open piracy, and we may see 
them hanging in chains along with other malefactors, as we 
descend the river Thames, — a fit retribution for their crimes ! " 

Mr. Brougham was higlily complimented, not only by his 
own side but by Mr. Perceval and Mr. Canning, and his 
address was carried nem. con* 

* 17 nansard, 689. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 267 

In the following Session of Parliament, with unrelaxed CHAP, 
zeal he pursued the object of effectually suppressing the slave ' 



against the 
Orders ii 
Council. 



trade, and he carried a bill by which persons engaged in it a.d. I812 
were declared to be guilty of felony.* 

In the session of 1812, which closed the first period of his His crusade 
parliamentary career, he applied himself ^vith ultimate success 
to the abolition of the Orders in Council respecting neutral 
commerce. These in the year 1808 he had impugned as 
counsel for the mercantile body at the bar of both Houses of 
Parliament, but the injury they inflicted on our own com- 
merce was not then sufficiently severe to counterbalance the 
blind resentment created in the English nation by the out- 
rageous violence of Napoleon's Berlin and Milan decrees, by 
which he presumed to declare the whole of the British Isles 
in a state of blockade, without having a ship-of-war which 
durst approach our shores. It was supposed that the extra- 
ordinary zeal which Brougham then displayed as counsel w^as 
stimulated by the heavy fees which he received from wealthy 
clients ; but now that he was acting as a representative of the 
people from pure patriotism or love of fame, his zeal was still 
more ardent, and to gain his object he sacrificed much time 
which he might profitably have employed in his profession. 
To his honour be it spoken, that if he was liable to be misled 
by an inordinate love of notoriety, he was ever above the 
sordid influence of pecuniary gain, which has darkened 
the reputation of very eminent advocates. Prom covetousness 
he was entirely free, and he was always ready to spend with 
liberality what he had legitimately earned. 

After several debates, in which Mr. Brougham took the 
lead, the House agreed to hear evidence in support of the in- 
numerable petitions presented for the recall of the Orders in 
Council. "The case was conducted seven weeks by Mr. 
Brougham and Mr. Alexander Baring, afterwards Lord 
Ashburton, than whom it would not have been possible to find 
a more powerful coadjutor. . . . The inquiry on the side 
of the petitions was wholly conducted by these two Members, 
and each night presented new objections and new defeats to 
the Orders in Council, and new advantages to the opposition — 
* 19 Hansard, 233. 



268 EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, by incidental debates on petitions presented, by discussions 
' arising from evidence tendered, by other matters broached 



A.D. 1812. occasionally in connection with the main subject. The 
Government at first, conceiving that there was a clamour 
raised out of doors against their policy, and hoping that this 
would of itself subside, endeavoured to gain time and put off 
the hearing of the evidence. But Messrs. Brougham and 
Baring kept steadily to their j^urpose, and insisted on calling 
in their witnesses at the earliest possible hour. They at 
length prevailed so far as to have it understood that the 
hearing should proceed daily at half-past four o'clock, and 
continue at the least till ten, by which means they generally 
kept it on foot till a much later hour. On the 11th of 3Iay 
Mr. Brougliam was examining a witness when he thought he 
heard a noise as if a pistol had gone off in some one's pocket — 
such at least was the idea which instantaneously passed through 
his mind, but did not interrupt his interrogation. Presently 
there were seen several persons in the gallery running towards 
the doors, and before a minute more had passed General Gas- 
coigne rushed up the House and announced that the Minister 
•had been shot, and had fallen on the spot dead. The House 
instantly adjourned. . . . The opponents of the Orders in 
Council refused to suspend their proceedings in consequence 
of this lamentable event. Indeed, the suspension of all other 
business which it occasioned was exceedingly favourable to the 
object of those who w^ere anxious for an opi3ortunity to 
produce their proof and obtain a decision. A vast mass of 
evidence was thus brought forward, showing incontestably 
the distressed state of trade and manufactures all over the 
country, and connecting this by clear indications, with the 
operation of the impolitic system which had been resorted 
to for 2^^^otecthi(/ our commerce and retorting on the enemy the 
evils of his oimi injustice^* 

At length Mr. Brougham brought forward his motion for 
an address to the Crown to recall the obnoxious Orders. On 
this occasion he delivered a speech which he himself con- 
sidered a chef-d'oeuvre. The details of the controversy have 
lost their interest, but the jicMoration advocating conciliation 

* 'Iiilroduction ' in 'Lord I'rouglium's Speeches,' vol. i., ilO. 



IGtli June. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 269 

-R-ith America, and deprecating tlie impending war between CKAP. 
the two countries, wliicli soon proved most injurious to ' 

our commerce, and wliicli in some degree tarnished our a.d. I812. 
naval fame, refers to immutable principles, and is re- 
markable both for soundness of thought and brilliancy of 
language : — 

" I am told that these counsels proceed from fear, and that I 
am endeavouring to instil a dread of American manufactures as 
the ground of our measures. Xot so, Sir. I am inculcating 
another fear — the wholesome fear of utter impolicy mixed with 
injustice — of acting unfairly to others for the purpose of ruining 
ourselves. And after all, from what quarter does this taunt 
proceed ? Who are they by whom I am upbraided for preaching 
up a dread of rival American manufactures? The very men 
w^hose whole defence of the system is founded upon a fear of 
competition fi-om European manufactures — who refuse to abandon 
the blockade of France from an apprehension (most ridiculous as 
the evidence shews) of European manufactures rivalling us 
through American commerce — who blockade the continent from 
a dread that the manufactures of France, by means of the 
shipping of America, wdll undersell our own — the men whose * 

whole principle is a fear of the capital, industry, and skill of 
England being outdone by the trumpery wares of France as 
soon as her market is equally open to both countries ! Sir, little 
as I may think such alarms worthy of an Englishman, there is a 
kind of fear which I would fain urge — a fear, too, of France — 
but it is her arms, and not of her arts. We have in that quarter 
some ground for apprehension, and I would have our policy 
directed solely with a view of removing it. A great effort is to 
be made, and though of its result others are far more sanguine 
than I am able to feel, I can have little hesitation in thinking 
that we had better risk some such attempt once for all, and 
either gain the end in view, or, convinced that it is unattainable, 
retire fiom the contest. If this is our policy, for God's sake let 
the grand efifort be made, single and undivided — undisturbed by 
a new quarrel, foreign to the purpose, and fatally interfering 
with its fulfilment. Let us not, for the hundredth time, commit 
the ancient error, which has so often betrayed us, of frittering 
down our strength — of scattering our forces in numerous and 
unavailing plans. We have no longer the same excuse for this 
folly which we once had to urge. All the colonies in the 
world are our own— Sugar Islands and Spice Islands there are 



A.D. 1812. 



270 EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, none from Martinico to Java to conquer — \re have every species 
of unsaleable produce in the gross, and all noxious climates 
without stint. Then let us not add a new leaf to the worst 
chapter of our book, and make for ourbclves new occasions when 
we can find none, for persisting in the most childish of all 
systems. AVhile engaged heartily on our front in opposing 
France, and trying the best chance of saving Europe, let us not 
secure to ourselves a new enemy, America, on our flank. Surely 
language wants a name for the folly which would, at a moment 
like the present, on the eve of this grand, and decisive, and last 
battle, reduce us to the necessity of feeding Canada with troops 
from Portugal — and Portugal with bread from England. I am 
asked whether I would recommend any sacrifice for the mere 
purpose of conciliating America. I recommend no sacrifice of 
honour for that, or for any pui-pose ; but I will tell you that I 
think we can well, and safely for our honour, aiford to conciliate 
America. Never did we stand so high since we were a nation 
in point of military character. We have it in abundance, and 
even to spare. This unhappy, and seemingly interminable war, 
lavish as it has been in treasure, still more profuse of blood, and 
barren of real advantage, has at least been equally lavish of 
glory. Use this glory — use this proud height on which we now 
stand, for the purpose of peace and conciliation with America. 
Let this, and its incalculable benefits, be the advantage which we 
reap from the war in Europe ; for the fame of that war enables 
us safely to take it. And who, I demand, give the most dis- 
graceful counsels — they who tell j'ou we are of military character 
but of yesterda}^ — we have yet a name to win — we stand on 
doubtful ground — we dare not do as we list for fear of being 
thought afraid — we cannot, without loss of name, stoop to pacify 
our American kinsmen ; or I, who say we are a great, a proud, 
a warlike jDCople — we have fought every wliere, and conquered 
wherever we fought — our character is eternally fixed — it stands 
too firm to bo shaken — and on the faith of it we may do towards 
America, safely for our honour, that which we know our 
interests require? This perpetual jealousy of America! Good 
God! I cannot with temper ask on what it rests! It drives me 
to a passion to think of it. Jealousy of America! I should as 
Koon think of being jealous of the tradesmen Avho supply mo 
with necessaries, or the clients who entrust their suits to my 
patronage. Jealousy of America! whose armies are still at the 
plough, or making, since your policy has willed it so, awkward 
(though improving) attempts at the loom — whoso assembled 



A.D. 1812. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHA:vr. 271 

navies coTild not lay siege to an English sloop of war ! Jealousy CHAP, 
of a Power which, is necessarily peaceful as well as weak, hut 
which, if it had all the amhition of France and her armies to 
hack it, and all the navy of England to hoot, nay, had it the lust 
of conquest which marks your enemy, and your own armies as 
well as navy, to gratify it, is placed at so vast a distance as to 
he perfectly harmless ! And this is the nation of which, for our 
honour's sake, we are desired to cherish a perpetual jealousy for 
the ruin of our hest interests.* I trust, Sir, that no such 
phantom of the hrain will scare us from the path of our duty. 
The advice which I tender is not the same which has at all 
times been offered to our country. By the treaty of Utrecht, 
which the execrations of ages have left inadequately censured, 
we were content to obtain, as the whole price of Blenheim and 
Eamillies, an additional share of the accursed slave trade. I 
would have you employ the glory which you haA^e won at 
Talavera and Corunna in restoring your commerce to its lawful, 
open, honest course, and rescue it from the mean and hateful 
channels in which it has been lately confined. And if any 
thoughtless boaster in America, or elsewhere, should vaunt that 
you had yielded through fear, I would not bid him wait until 
some new achievement of our arms put him to silence ; but I 
would counsel you in silence to disregard him." j* 

Such an impression was made by this speech, that after His victory. 
Mr. Rose, the Secretary to the Treasury, had in vain at- 
tempted to answer it, Lord Castlereagh, on the part of the 
Government, announced "that the question need not be 
pressed to a division, because the Crown had been advised 
immediately to rescind the Orders in Council." 

For a few moments there seemed a prospect of Brougham Transient 
being speedily in office — although it soon vanished, and was officTTo^the 
not realized till after the expiration of twenty years. George Whigs. 
III. was now insane beyond hope of recovery, and tlie heir- 
apparent occupied the throne under the title of Regent. 

♦ Brou;L(liam was taunted wilh his "usual indiscretion" in talking so con- 
temptuou.sly of the Araoricuns, whom lie wished to conciliate, and it was after- 
wards said that such a disparaging representation of their prowess determined 
them on a rupture to sliow the result of a fight between one English and one 
American frii^^ute, yard-arm and yard-arm. Wonderful to think that Brougham, 
still in the full possession of his bodily and mental vigour, and of his eloquence, 
survives to sec the United States with the greatest commercial navy of any 
nation in the world, the conquerors of Mexico, and with ships of war on every 
sea ! [April 1th, lS5i.] f 23 Uansard, 4SG. 



272 EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP. He had been many years at the head of the Whig party, who 
' counted with undoubting confidence on their advent to power 



A.D. 1812. when George III., their inveterate enemy, should cease to reign. 
The Regent, although by no means so much devoted to Wliig 
principles as in the lifetime of Mr. Fox, still bore a grudge 
against his father's Tory Ministers, by whom he thought he 
had been Ipng persecuted, and he would have been willing, 
on his o'wn terms, to have formed a Liberal Government, with 
Lords Grey and Grenville at the head of it. For this purpose 
a negotiation was opened^ which at first wore a promising 
aspect, and it was expected that Brougham, abandoning the 
law as a profession, would hold a high political office, that of 
President of the Board of Trade being said to be the one with 
which he would be contented. But throu^'h the bad faith or 
indiscretion of Mr. Sheridan, and the foolish conduct of all 
concerned in the new arrangement, it went off, and the 
Tories continued in power till the accession of William IV. 

^1^ f ,^^: A dissolution of Parliament immediately followed this transient 

eluded from . . •' 

rariiameut. glimpse of officc to the AVhigs. Camelford, in the mean time, 

had been transferred to a new owner ^v^lo knew not Brougham^ 

and, to Brougham's great indignation, no other seat had been 

provi'led for him. Instead of being President of the Board 

of Trade, with the prospect of the premiership, liis political 

career seemed closed for ever. 

His unsuc- While brooding over his disappointed hopes, a deputation 

candidature aiTived from a large class of Liverj^ool merchants, who, 

for Liver- crrateful for his exertions aj]^ainst the Orders in Council, 
pool. ... . 

solicited him to become a candidate to represent tliem. 

He accepted the invitation, along with Mr. Creevey, 

another Whig candidate ; but the Tories were too strong for 

them. To no purpose Brougham made many eloquent 

speeches, setting forth his services to the men of Liverpool. 

The following was the most stirring appeal : — 

" Brace your nerves ! I bid you all be prepared to hear wdiat 
touches you all equally. We are, by this day's intelligence, at 
war with America in good earnest— our Government has at last 
issued letters of marque and reprisals against the United States. 
[Universal cries of God help us! God helj) us J] Aye, God help 
us! God of his infinite compassion take pity upon us! God 



A.D. 1812. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 273 

help and protect this poor town, and this whole trading CHAP, 
country ! Kow, I ask whether 3'ou will he represented in 
Parliament hy those who have brought this grievous calamity 
upon your heads, or by us, who have constantly opposed the 
mad career which was plunging you into it ? AYhether will you 
trust the revival of your trade — the restoration of jouy liveli- 
hood — to them who have destroyed it, or to me, whose counsels, 
if followed in time, would have averted this unnatural war, and 
left Liverpool flourishing in opulence and peace ? Make your 
choice — for it lies with yourselves which of us shall be com- 
missioned to bring back commerce and plenty — they, whose 
stubborn infatuation has chased those blessings away, or we, 
who are only known to you as the strenuous enemies of their 
miserable policy, the fast friends of your best interests."* 

Nevertheless, from golden arguments addressed to the free- 
men, which outweighed all this eloquence, Mr. Canning and 
General Gascoigne were returned by a large majority, and 
poor Brougham was obliged to leave the town, with the 
intelligence which added much to the poignancy of his morti- 
fication, that tlie AThigs had provided another seat for 
Creevey, whose claims on the party were so much less 
considerable. 

Though filled with resentment, he concealed his feelings at 
the time, even from those who were most intimate with him. 
Lord Murray in a letter to me says : 

" After his defeat at Liverpool I passed a day with him at 
Lord Sefton's, and travelled with him to Brougham Hall. lie 
was invariably good-humoured — I may say exactly as he would 
have been if nothing untoward had happened." 

When left alone, however, he became very moody, and in 
his despair he ran down to Scotland, and made a dash at the 
Inverkeithing district of burghs; but, notwithstanding re- 
iterated expositions of his public services, he was again 
defeated, and he found himself excluded from Parliament. 

His resentment against the Whig party for thus deserting His ba.i 
liim sunk so deep in his mind that, many years afterwards, X^wl-'^ 
he thus described a "discontented, but discerning Whig," leaders, 
as making a just estimate of their demerits : — 

* • Lord Brougham's Speeches ' vol. i. 485. 
VOL. VIII. T 



274 EEIGN OF GEOEGE III. 

CHAP. "He despised the timidity whicli so often paralysed their 

movements ; he disliked the jealousies, the personal predilec- 



A.D. 1812. 



tions, and prejudices which so frequently distracted their 
councils ; he abhorred the spirit of intrigue, which not rarely 
gave some inferior man, or some busy, meddling woman, pro- 
bably unprincipled, a sway in the destiny of the party, fatal to 
its success, and all but fatal to its character ; he held in utter 
ridicule, the squeamishness, both as to persons and things, which 
emasculated so many of the genuine regular Whigs ; and no 
consideration of interest, no relations of friendshiiD, no regard 
for party discipline, could prevail with him to pursue that 
course so ruinous to the Whig opposition, of half and-half re- 
sistance to the Government, marching to the attack with one 
eye turned to the court, and one askance to the country, nor 
ever making war upon the Ministry without regarding the time 
when themselves might occupy the position now the object of 
assault. The patrician leaders of the party never could learn 
the difference between 1810 and 1780 — still fancied they lived 
' in times before the flood ' of the French revolution, when the 
heads of a few great families could dispose of all matters accord- 
ing to their own good pleasure — and never could be made to 
understand how a feeble motion, prefaced by a feeble speech, if 
made by an elderly lord, and seconded by a younger one, could 
fail to satisfy the country, and shake the Ministr3^" * 

22nd Feb., Broughaiii remained out of Parliament nearly four years, 

^^^ • and we must now go back to trace his career at the bar. 

great speech He first obtained a commanding position there by his 

-"nt!'-'''" ^P®^^^^ ^^ " Military Flogging." The ' Examiner ' newspaper 

Flogging." had published an article containing an account of a sentence 

of 1000 lashes being pronounced by a court-martial, of which 

750 were inflicted, when the unfortimate soldier was carried 

senseless from the flekl, with the following comment : — 

" Buonaparte does not treat his refractory troops in this 
manner ; there is not a man in his ranks whose back is seamed 
with the lacerating cat-o '-nine-tails ; his soldiers have never yet 
been brought up to view one of their comrades stripped naked ; 
hi.s limbs tied with ropes to a triangular machine ; his back torn 
to the bono by the merciless cutting whip-cord, applied by 
persons who relieve each other at short intervals, that thej'" may 
])ring the fnll nnoxhausted strength of a man to the work of 



Lord Brdiigliam's Speeches,' vol. i. 17:5. 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 275 

Buonaparte's soldiers liave never yet with tingling CHAP. 



ears listened to the piercing screams of a human creature so 
tortured ; they have never seen the blood oozing from his rent 
flesh; they have never beheld a surgeon, with dubious look, 
pressing the agonized victim's pulse, and calmly calculating to 
an odd blow, how far suffering may be extended, until, in its 
extremity, it encroach upon life. In short, Buonaparte's soldiers 
cannot form any notion of that most heart-rending of all exhibi- 
tions on this side hell — an English military flogging." 

For this Sir Yicary Gibbs, then Attorney General (who 
may be considered the liberator of the press, by bringing 
prosecutions for libel into such odium, that they were almost 
discontinued after his time), filed an ex officio information 
against John Hunt and Leigh Hunt^ and Brougham was their 
advocate. His speech was extremely temperate and judicious 
as well as forcible. After a few introductory observations 
upon the address of the Attorney General, he thus pro- 
ceeded : — 

" Gentlemen, — If you are not convinced — if, upon reading the 
composition attentively, you are not every one of you fully and 
thoroughly convinced — that the author had a blamable, a 
guilty intention in writing it, that he wrote it for a wicked 
purpose, you must find the defendants Not Guilty. But I will 
not disguise from you, that you are trying a more general and 
important question than this. You are now to determine 
whether an Englishman still enjoys the privilege of freely dis- 
cussing public measures; whether an Englishman still enjoys 
the privilege of impeaching, not one individual character, not 
one or two public men, not a single error in policy, not any par- 
ticular abuse of an established system ; the question for you to 
try is, whether an Englishman shall any longer have the power 
of making comments on a system of policy, of discussing a 
general, I had almost said, an abstract, political proposition, of 
communicating to his countrymen his opinion upon the merits, 
not of a particular measure, or even a line of conduct pursued by 
this or that administration — but of a general system of policy, 
which it has pleased the Government to adopt at all times; — 
wliether a person devoted to the interests of his country, warm 
in his attachment to its cause, vehemently impelled by a love 
of its happiness and glory, has a right to endeavour, by his 
own individual exertions, to make that perfect which he so 

T 2 



II. 



A.D. 1811. 



A.D. 1811. 



276 EEIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, greatly admires, by pointing out those little defects in its con- 
stitution which are the only spots whereupon his partial eyes 
can rest for blame ? "Whether an Englishman, anxious for the 
honour and renown of the army, and deeply feeling how much 
the safety of his country depends upon the perfection of its 
militaiy system, has a right to endeavour to promote the good 
of the sei-vice, by showing wherein the present system is de- 
trimental to it, by marking for correction those imperfections 
which bear indeed no proportion to the general excellence of 
the establishment, those flaws which, he is convinced, alone pre- 
vent it from attaining absolute perfection ? Whether a person 
anxious for the welfare of the individual soldier, intimately 
persuaded that on the feelings and the honour of the soldier de- 
pend the honour and glory of our arms, sensible that upon 
those feelings and that honour hinges the safety of the country 
at all times, but never so closely as at present, — whether 
imbued with such sentiments, and urged by these motives, a 
man has not a right to make his opinions as public as is neces- 
sary to give them effect ? Whether he may not innocently, nay, 
laudably, seek to make converts to his own views, by giving 
them publicity, and endeavour to realise his wishes for the 
good of the State and the honour of its arms, by proving, 
in the face of his fellow-citizens, the truth of the doctrines to 
which he is himself conscientiously attached ? These, gentlemen, 
are the questions put to you by this record ; and your verdict 
when entered upon it, will decide such questions as these." 

The staple of his subsequent address, consisted of extracts 
from pamphlets, written by officers of undoubted gallantry 
and loyalty, censuring in severe terms the established system 
of excessive military punishments, and other grievances to 
which our soldiers are subjected. Having read with par- 
ticular emphasis a description by Sir Robert AVilson of the 
frightful sickness and mortality among our troops in the West 
Indies, he thus continued : — 

" Tlie gallant officer even goes so far as to wish those colonies 
were abandoned, rather than that they should be an inglorious 
cemetery for our soldiers. I am not disposed to follow him in 
this opinion ; I cannot go so far. But God forbid I should 
blame him for holding it ; or that for making his sentiments 
public, 1 should accuse him of having written a libel on that 
sci-vicc, of which he is at onco the distinguished ornament and 
the valued friend. Far from imputing blame to him, I respect 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 277 

him the more for publishing a bold and downi'ight opinion, — CHAP, 
for expressing his feelings strongly, and thus affording the best ' 



proof of his sincerity. He proposes no less than that the "West ^^ ^g^-^ 
India Islands should be given up, in order to improve our means 
of defence at home. He says — ' It is to be hoped, that the day 
is not remote, when our colonies shall cease to be such a drain 
upon the active population of this country ; that charnel-house 
must be closed for ever against British troops. The soldier 
who dies in the field, is wrapped in the mantle of honour, and 
a ray of glory is reflected upon his surviving relatives ; but 
in a warfare against climate, the energy of the man is destroyed 
before life is extinguished ; he wastes into an inglorious grave, 
and the calamitous termination of his existence offers no cheer- 
ing recollections to relieve the afiliction of his loss.' Did Sir 
Eobert AVilson mean to excite the brave and ill-fated regiments 
to mutiny and revolt, who were already enclosed in those 
charnel-houses ? Or did he mean to deter persons from enlist- 
ing in those regiments, who might otherwise have been in- 
clined to go there ? Did he mean to address any of the regi- 
ments under actual orders for the West India service, and to 
excite revolt among them, by telling every one who read the 
passage I have cited, that which it so forcibly puts to all sol- 
diers under such orders : ' Where are you going ? You are rush- 
ing into a charnel-house I ' Far be it from me to impute such 
motives. It is impossible ! The words I have read are uttered 
in the discussion of a general question — a question on which 
he speaks warmly, because he feels strongly." 

He concluded by thus exposing the absurd inconsistency of 
the argument for the prosecution : — 

" The men, therefore, are to see their comrades tied up, and to 
behold the flesh stripped off from their bodies, aye, bared to the 
bone, without any emotion but that of tranquil satisfaction ! And 
all this the bystanders arc also to witness, without the smallest 
risk of thinking twice, after such a scene, whether they shall 
enter into such a service ! But have a care how, at a distance 
from the scene, and long after its horrors have closed, you say 
one word on the general question of the policy of the system ; 
because, if you should attempt to express your opinions upon that 
subject, a single word of argument, one accidental remark, will 
rouse the whole army into open revolt ! Take no precautions for 
concealing such sights from those whom you would entice into 
the service ; do not stop up their cars while the air rings with 
the lash ; let them read the horrors of the spectacle in the faces 



278 



REIGN OF GEORGE III. 



CHAP. 
II. 



A.D. 1811. 



The same 
publication 
heiil iuno- 
ceut at 
West- 
minster, 
and a libel 
in Lincoln- 
shire. 



of those who have endured it. Such things cannot move a man : 
but description, remark, commentary, argument, who can hear 
without instantaneous rebellion ?" 

Lord Ellenborough, in summing up the case to the jury, 
characterized this as " a speech of great ability, eloquence, 
and manliness," but observed : — 

" You (the Jury) are to say whether this is a fair discussion 
of a public question, or whether it is calculated to inflame the 
passions, to induce the soldiers to believe they are worse dealt 
with than the soldiers of France, to blunt their resistance to the 
efforts of Buonaparte for our destruction. In the presence of 
one of the ofi&cers (Sir Eobert Wilson) whose publications have 
been quoted, I have no difficulty in saying that he would have 
done better if he had imposed more of a guard upon his observa- 
tions. The purity of his purpose no man can doubt. He 
addresses his observations to the Minister of the couutiy, but 
I think he would have done better if he had discussed the sub- 
ject privately with Mr. Pitt. Although you are entitled to find 
a verdict according to your own opinion, it is generally expected 
that I should, under the suggestion of the Act of Parliament, 
tell you mine. I have no doubt that this libel has been pub- 
lished with the intention imputed to it, and that it is entitled to 
the character which is given to it in the information." * 

The jury retired, and after a consultation of two hours 
returned a verdict of Not Guilty, which was received with 
loud acclamations.t 

As a proof of tlie unsatisfactory manner in which the 
criminal law was put in force by the Crown in those days, it 
is melancholy to relate that exactly three weeks from this 
acquittal another information for the same libel was tried at 
the assizes for the county of Jjincoln against the proprietor 
of a country newspaper, in wliicli it had appeared, and this 
jury finding the defendant Guilty, he was sentenced to 
eighteen months' imprisonment. Brougham attended on a 
special retainer, but he miglit as well have wasted his elo- 
quence on tlie desert air, as try to make any impression on 

* Thin was a llai^rant porvorsion of IMr. Fox's liibol Act, umlor which the 
Jiid^o ought to tell l]i(> Jury wlnit inltiitiou on the part of tho writor will 
make the writiu}:; a libel, hut should leave it cxclusiv(>ly to the jury to say 
whctlicr they Ik^Uovc that such was the inteutiou of tho writer. 

t 31 Stttto Trials, 3G7. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 279 

the old-fashioned ultra-Tory, fox-hunting squires he had to CHAP, 
address. The judge was Baron Wood, who for twenty years, ' 

while at the bar, had been " devil to the Attorney-General," a.d. i8ii. 
and, much less liberal than Lord EUenborough, thought every 
man ought to be severely punished who writes anything to 
question the Acts of the Government for the time being : — 

" If," said he, " the learned counsel for the defendant, really 
entertains the opinion he expresses on military flogging, I wish 
he would make use of that eloquence of which he is so 
eminently possessed, in that House of which he is a member. 
The House of Parliament is the proper place for the discussion 
of subjects of this nature. There it should appear, and not in 
pamphlets or newspapers. The right to discuss the acts of our 
Legislature would be a large permission indeed. Is the libeller 
to come and make the people dissatisfied with the Government 
under which they live ? This is not to be permitted to any 
man. It is unconstitutional and seditious. Of this publication 
1 have no difficulty in asserting that it has a tendency to pro- 
duce the mischief ascribed to it, and that it is a libel." * 

Brougham was exceedingly mortified by this defeat after 
his recent victory, and he threatened to move for the im- 
peachment of Judge Wood, but he wisely abstained from the 
attempt, knowing that in the House of Commons, as then 
constituted, he could have met with no sympathy. 

In again defending the Hunts for a libel in the * Examiner,' 
upon the Prince Kegent, Brougham had an opportunity of 
which he amply availed himself, of pouring out sarcasms 
upon the vices of the royal prosecutor. A letter of Horner, 
who, sitting by my side, heard this speech, gives its just 
character, with an unexaggerated account of the demeanour 
of the judge : — '* Brougham made a powerful speech, — unequal 
and wanting that unity which is so effective with a jury ; some 
parts were eloquent, particularly in the conclusion, where he 
had the address, without giving any advantage, to fasten the 
words cfftminacy and cowardice where everybody could apply 
them. One very difficult part of the case, the conduct of 
the Ilegent to the Princess, he managed with skill and great 
effect ; and liis transition from that subject to the next part 
of his case was a moment of real eloquence. Lord EUeu- 
♦ 31 State Trials, 535. 



280 



REIGN OF GEOEGE III, 



CHAP. 
II. 



A.D. 1812- 

1816. 

Brougham 
languishes 
when out 
of Parlia- 
ment. 



borough was more than usually impatient, and indecently 
violent. He said that the counsel was inoculated with all 
the poison of the libel."* The defendants were found guilty, 
and sentenced to a long imprisonment. 

Although Brougham had gained brilliant reputation as an 
advocate in what used to be called technically '* the sedition 
line," t after ceasing to represent Camelford, and failing in his 
attempts upon Liverpool and Inverkeithing, he greatly missed 
the House of Commons, which had not only procured him 
agreeable excitement, and strengthened his claim to political 
promotion, but assisted him materially in his profession. 
Generally, with us, a lawyer's practice at the bar leads to 
Parliament ; but in Brougham's case Parliament led to prac- 
tice at the bar. His forensic performances, unaided, never 
would have given him any considerable position. His habit 
was immediately before setting off upon the circuit to make 
a long *^ splashing " speech about jurisprudential reform, 
copiously introducing black letter lore, got up for the nonce, 
which persuaded the northern attorneys and their clerks 
that he was profoundly versed in the common law of this 
realm. Prcesentia minuit famam ; they were a little disap- 
pointed when he came down among them and shewed that he 
was not quite up to the distinction between actions ex con- 
tractu and actions ex delicto. But when, in a few months? 
they read another speech of the same sort, which he had 
delivered to an admiring senate, they thought he must be 
able to obtain ample damages for non-payment of a bill of 
exchange or for an assault. Excluded from Parliament there 
was nothing to counteract the untavourable impression he 
made when a brief in any ordinary matter was intrusted to 
him. Accordingly, his business fell ofi", and he began to 
despond. He might have got on in the Crown Court, 
whore a knowledge of law may be dispensed with, but 

* Life of Ilonur, vol. 11. 137. 

t /. e., tU^fciidiug persona jirosccutcd by tho Attornoy Ccnoral for political 
offonccB— tt highway to fame which has been long closed. A more obscure 
avenue still subsists called "The Roj)e Walk," that is, Ixing counsel for 
prisoners at the Old liailey o;- the Assizes, and receiving brii'fs from the gaol 
atlfirnies or the juisoners themselves. It took the name, which it still retains, 
when almost every eonvictiou for felony was followed up by luimjing. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 281 

here also lie failed ; for when engaged for the prisoner he CHAP, 
was singularly indiscreet in the questions he put. Seem- ' 



ingly he acted upon the supposition that his client was really a.d. 1812- 
innocent (a presumption of law which, nine times out of ten, •^^^^• 
was contrary to the fact), and as at that time the prisoner's 
counsel could not address the jury, he made but a poor hand 
of it when employed to get off a burglar or a highwayman. 
He even contracted a distaste for the circuit, and till he wore 
a silk gown as Attorney General to Queen Caroline, he was 
glad of an excuse for staying away from an assize town. 

But about this time he began to form the connection which Origin of 
finally led to that distinction. At first, this extraordinary tion^with" 
and ill-fated woman had looked upon him with suspicion and IJaroiine of 

Brunswick 

dislike, as belonging to the Whigs, who, when in office, had 
instituted the " delicate investigation " against her, and she 
placed all her confidence in Lord Eldon and the Tories, who 
had warmly espoused her cause ; but George III. becoming 
permanently insane, and the Prince of Wales as Kegent 
having renounced liis Whiggish propensities and confirmed 
in office his father's Tory Ministers, and they having sud- 
denly not only abandoned her, but entered into a combina- 
tion with him to destroy her, she was obliged to throw herself 
for protection on the Whigs, and Brougham became her 
chief adviser. He was first casually introduced to her by 
Mr. Canning, who was under the ungrounded suspicion of 
being too intimate with her, and had even excited jealousy in 
the mind of her profligate husband. She was highly pleased 
with Brougham's conversation, and she invited him to visit 
her at Blackheath. He cultivated her acquaintance with 
much assiduity, as it gave him consequence in the mean time, 
and offered the prospect of substantial advantages hereafter, 
whatever turn her conjugal disputes might take, before or 
after the time of her reaching the dignity of Queen. She 
was likewise an instrument of high interest and importance, 
as mother of the Princess Charlotte, the heir presumptive to 
the Crown, who was much attached to her, and over whom 
she was likely to exercise permanent influence. Brougliam, 
by liis agreeable manners, by expressing deep sym})athy in 
the wrongs of the injured Caroline, and above all by denounc- 



282 



REIGN OF GEORGE III. 



CHAP. 
II. 



A. D. 1812- 
1816. 



IS n 



He 

8t()rp<l to 
the House 
ot' Com- 
niutis. 



ing with just indignation the treachery and baseness of Eldon 
and Perceval in abandoning her cause when they were taken 
into favour and continued in office by the Regent, gained 
her confidence, and received a promise from her that, when 
Queen, he should be her Attorney General. 

This prospect was consoling to him, and did not seem 
distant, for George III. had reached a very advanced age, 
and with his infirmities of mind and body, could not be ex- 
pected to last much longer. But entire faith was not to be 
placed in Princesses more than in Princes, and Brougham 
was by no means satisfied with his position as Caroline's 
prime minister. He became more and more impatient to be 
again in the House of Commons, which he justly considered 
the true arena for a display of the peculiar powers with 
which he was gifted. Various plans were talked of for gain- 
ing his object ; but to no purpose. Prom the successful con- 
clusion of the war against Napoleon, the Tory Government 
had gained unbounded popularity, and there was no open 
constituency before whom a professed Whig, trusting merely 
to his principles, could appear with much chance of success. 
The nomination seats belonging to the \A'hig aristocracy 
were all filled up, and there was little sincere desire to create 
a vacancy for one in whose steady attachment to the party 
no safe reliance could be reposed. 

Considering that this was the most eventful crisis in the 
modern history of Europe, we may conceive Brougham's 
mortification in being excluded from taking any part in the 
debates of Parliament — more particularly when Horner, who 
had started in the race of public life with him, had not only 
distinguished himself by discussing questions of political 
economy, but had acquired considerable reputation by speeches 
respecting the new distribution of territory in Europe, on the 
fall of Napoleon, and his banishment iirst to Elba, and after- 
wards to 8t. Helena. 

At last the object was accomplisliod through female 
fluence. The ]^]arl of Darlington was then the 
borough proprietor in England. For a second wife he had 
married liis mistress, and the great ambition of tlie two 
was that, although she was not '' visited," she 



in- 
greatest 



might 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 283 

become a duchess. His fortune was immense, and lie would CHAP, 
freely, at any reasonable price, buy seats for the session, the ' 



Parliament, or in fee-simple. These he generally distributed a.d. 1816. 
among men on whose steady voting according to his orders 
he could implicitly rely ; but one or two seats he would trust 
to aspiring youths of extraordinary talents, who professed to 
be of the same side in politics which he took, and, although 
somewhat unsteady, and presuming to haye an opinion of 
their o^vn, would add to his credit, from being called his 
Members. The privilege of selecting these, was generally 
exercised by the Countess, and in the beginning of the year 
1816, she returned Hemy Brougham lor the borough of 
Winchelsea — once a flourishing Cinque Port, now deserted 
by the sea and become a depopulated village. Brougham 
never did anything mean to gain her favour, and never, in 
any degree, sacrificed his independence while representing a 
peer or peeress. He continued to act for Winchelsea during 
the most brilliant portion of his career, and when his politics 
differed from those of his patron, he transferred himself to 
the Duke of Devonshire, who surrendered him to the county 
of York. 

It may be conceived in what a state of repletion Brougham 
was after a retention which had endured nearly four con- 
secutive years. Writing frequent pamphlets and countless 
articles for reviews, magazines, and newspapers, had brought 
him some occasional relief, aided by after-dinner speeches, 
and copious ebullitions of rhetoric at public meetings ; but 
there remained an immense conglomeration of ideas in his 
mind, which could only be vomited forth in the House of 
Commons. Accordingly he made a long speech against Hisfecun- 
the address to the Crown, the night wlien he first took his bate/" 
seat for Winchelsea, and subsequently he spoke as much 
during the single session, as would be a sufficient contribu- 
tion to debate from an ordinary man during a long parlia- 
mentary life. 

Supporting the amendment to the address in answer to 
the speech from the throne, he drew a melancholy picture 
of the condition of the country at the conclusion of the 
war, and shadowed forth the various alterations in our laws 



284 EEIGN OF GEOKGE III. 

CHAP, and institutions by which we nii2:ht be rescued from the 

II . . 

' distress which all classes, and more particularly landed pro- 



A.D. 1816. prietors, were suffering, by the sudden fall of prices. He 
concluded by urging — 

" That our expenses should be reduced to the smallest amount 
possible, consistently with our safety. For it was a robbery of the 
people, it was a cruel mockery of their sufferings to tell them, 
after twenty-five years of miseiy, and when the looked-for peace 
was at last arrived, that they were still to be loaded with the 
expenses of war without the benefits of peace, — and for what 
purpose? For the purpose of securing the cession of new 
islands, of appointing new governors, new secretaries, new clerks ; 
of establishing new sources of patronage, new causes of alarm to 
the people, and new dangers to public liberty." * 

In a few days he made an attack upon the Holy Alliance, 

by moving for a copy of the treaty between Eussia, Austria, 

and Prussia. Alas ! upon a division, it was found that his 

energetic speech upon this combination of despots against 

the liberties of mankind, influenced only a minority of 

thirty ! t His grand object was at once to seize upon the 

leadership of Opposition ; but his bold pretension was by no 

means acquiesced in ; for the aristocratic tendency of the 

Whigs pointed to Lord Althorp, the representative of the 

Spencers, and, if a new man must be chosen, the election 

would have fallen upon the steady Horner much sooner than 

upon the reckless Brougham. This accounts for the small 

numbers that voted with him in support of Opposition motions. 

Besides taking part in every debate originated by others, 

he himself brought forward motions of great importance 

about finance, Spain, excise prosecutions, the education of 

the people, the law of libel, and the general distress arising 

His solution from the low price of corn. His treatment of this last subject 

witirwhi'ch wbows the crude notions still prevailing anaong well-educated 

he thought lyipn on vital questions of political economy. Assuming, with 

was .'Uiiicted the api)lause of both sides of the House, that the low price of 

inw")rl«;of ^^^^ ^^^^^ *^'^ ^^^^ ^'^^ ^^ deplored and remedied if possible, he 
c'Mi). ascribed it mainly to excess of cultivation, adding, 

" This, however, is not the only cause of the evil I complain 



♦ :{2 Ilunanrd, 37. f 32 Haiisnrd, 3G3. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 285 

of, altliongh I am entirely disposed to rank the great extension CHAP, 
of cultivation among the principal causes, or at least to regard ' 



it as lying near the foundation of the mischief." * ^-^^ 5^31^^ 

His chief effort during the session was a proposed bill for 
reforming the law of libel, and particularly for depriving the 
Attorney Greneral of the power of filing criminal informations, 
which had been brought into great odium by Sir Vicary 
Gibbs ; but having obtained leave to lay the bill on the table 
and having read it a first time, he allowed it to drop and 
never resumed it, although it contained other valuable 
enactments which were afterwards adopted by the legisla- 
ture. 

In the following year there was severe manufacturing ^-^^ i^i^. 
distress, which gave rise to the " Battle of Peterloo," or the 
"Manchester Massacre," and dangerous riots in other parts 
of England. Brougham very forcibly assailed the Govern- ^tLn^to the 
ment for the unconstitutional means employed to restore the " Six Acts." 
public tranquillity, and afterwards yielded powerful aid in 
opposing Lord Castlereagh's "Six Acts," by which, for a season, 
arbitrary government superseded the English constitution. 
Such times are never likely again to recur in this country. 

Brougham had no peculiar connection with this struggle 
beyond the other leaders of the Liberal party then in Parlia- 
ment. I hasten therefore to scenes in which he played the 
sole or the most distinguished part. 

From his many lengthy parliamentary speeches in the 
years 1817, 1818, and 1819, I can find nothing grave to 
select which would now repay perusal, but the reader may be 
pleased with specimens of the pleasantry with which he 
indemnified the House for his somewhat tiresome attempts 
to persuade them by much speaking, importunity, and 
repetition. 

He was now usually pitted against Canning, and in answer 
to a motion for an address to the Prince Regent enumerating 
the grievances of which the nation was then entitled to com- 
plain, his opponent liad expressed surprise that " the necessity ^^*^ •^"•x* 
for Parliamentary Keform " was omitted, and had then gone 

♦ 9th April, 181G. 



286 



EEIGN OF GEORGE IH. 



CHAP, on to prove that none was wanted. Brougham in his reply 
' observed, 



A.D. 1817. 

His exposi- 
tion of the 
tactics of a 
rival orator. 



" The right honourable gentleman has charged this address 
principally with omissions, and above all, leaving out the subject 
of Parliamentary Eeform. Now, for my part, I can hardly 
regret this, as it has afforded the right honourable gentleman an 
occasion for letting off his long meditated speech on that ques- 
tion ; and I must say the right honourable gentleman himself 
was rather ungi'ateful in making such invectives against an 
omission which he has turned to so much account ; to be sure, 
had it been otherwise, I do not at all know that he would not 
have contrived to bring in the speech which he had ready for 
use'— such is his versatility in debate. The right honourable 
gentleman has honoured me by comparing me to a commander, 
and has given a very distorted account of my operations ; and it is 
said that chiefs, accustomed to be opposed, get to know one 
another's tactics very precisely. Now, I cannot have the pre- 
sumption to say it of myself ; but we have all learned pretty 
accurately his course of conducting the parliamentary campaign. 
He takes care to have magazines well stored with ready-made 
cut-and-dry speeches, prepared for future occasions, and adapted 
as imjpromjptu replies to the topics he supposes may be used. 
He deems it more convenient, better suited to the impoi-tance of 
the subject, and more becoming the dignity of the place, to 
weigh well what his adversaries are to say, and be ready with 
an elaborate — answer, may not always be the fit w^ord, but, 
liarangue, or merriment, perhaps — than rashlj^ trust to the inspira- 
tion of the moment. The plan, no doubt, has great advantages ; 
but, it has its inconveniences also. While the expected topics 
are used, for which the answers are ready, all goes well. But if, 
as will now and then crossly happen, they never are used at all, 
then comes the difficulty how to get in all the fine things pre- 
pared with f^o much labour to meet them. That all this work 
sliould be throw^n aw^ay, all liours of day, and the midnight 
oil, consumed in vain — in common humanity, this cannot be 
expected. The passages got up must at all events be intro- 
duced. The right honourable gentleman fancies his adversary 
has used the arguments he himself is prepared to meet ; he puts 
them into his mouth and answers them ; or he supposes some- 
thing left out ^^hich w^ould really have been out of place, and he 
amuses himself and the House by being very droll upon the 
omission."* 



?,G llaiisarJ IVM. 



LIFE OF LOED BKOUGHAM. 287 

In one of his speeches on the benefits of general education CHAP, 
he pointed out the advantages of the Scotch parochial schools, ' 



thus slily sneering at the land of his birth and breeding : — 8th May, 

"Go where you will over the world, the name of a Scotchman 

is still found — combined in the minds of all men, perhaps with some Q"^^7 ^^ to 

*' -^ ■^. the quanties 

qualities which sincere regard for that good peojple restrains me from by which 

mentioning — but certainly with the reputation of a ' well ^^^ ^^^^^ 

educated man.* To the possession of this enviable characteristic, their own 

and not, I trust, to the other qualities imputed to them, we may fairly countiy 

ascribe the high credit, the great ease and what is usually termed [^^^^ ^° 

the success in Ufe, which generally attend Scotchmen settled abroad. 

The countries where they have settled have partially followed their 

example — as indeed, into what part of the world have they not 

immigrated? and, sir, let me ask, where have they gone without 

conferring benefits on the place of their adoption ? " * 

Charles Williams Wynn, for many years the father of the 
House of Commons, from his youth upwards had been 
the great oracle of parliamentary law, and would himself 
have been elected to the chair had it not been for his un- 
fortunate voice, which it was feared would have procured 
for him the appellation of Mr. Squeaker, instead of " Mr. 
Speaker." Upon a question oi i^rivilege, this venerable senator 
having delivered an opinion contrary to Brougham's, and 24th Nov., 
fortified it with many precedents and references to the ^^^^' 
Journals, Brougham thus complimented him amidst the 
"cheers and laughter" of all Members present: — 

" I am particularly grieved by the sentiments expressed by Best smell- 
my right honourable and learned friend, the member for Mont- J"?-^'ottle 

fov 1 "nil*- 

gomeryshire — a man learned beyond all others in the history of liamentary 
the assembly whose privileges I am endeavouring to support — antiquary. 
skilled beyond all men, deeper than all the children of men, in 
the knowledge of the voluminous records of parliamentarjj, 
precedents — a man who is even supposed by most people to 
know the whole of the Journals of the House by heart, who de- 
votes to their study the light of day and the midnight oil, whose 
attention to everything connected with Parliament is so rigid 
that many persons suppose he really comes down to the House 
every morning at ten o'clock, the hour at which the House 
ought to assemble according to the strict letter of the adjourn- 



• 38 Hansard, 585. 



288 REIGN OF GEORGE III. 

CHAP, ment ; in short, a man whose devotion in this respect, can only 
be equalled by that of a learned ancestor of his,* who having 



AD 1819 f^^^ted from excessive toil and fatigue, a smelling-bottle was 
called for, when one who knew much better the remedy adapted 
to the case, exclaimed — ^ For God's saize bring him an old hlach- 
letter Act of Parliament, and let him smell at that.' I cannot help 
thinking, that in like manner, if my right honourable and learned 
friend should ever be attacked in a similar way, the mere smell- 
ing of a volume of the Joui-nals could not fail instantly to 
revive him." 

These specimens, the most favourable I can select, seem 
rather to justify the remark that in debate he dwelt too 
long upon the same topic whether grave or gay, and that 
he weakened both his logic and his wit by excessive elonga- 
tion. 

* Speaker "Williams, temp. Car. II. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 289 



CHAPTEE III. 



ATTORNEY-GENERAL TO QUEEN CAROLINE. — 1820-1821. 

At the death of George III., Brougham certainly filled a CHAP, 
large space in the public eye ; but his position was not very '_ 



comfortable for himself. His own party never conceded the 1820. 

lead to him in the House of Commons, and still regarded ^^^^ "^^^^' 

him with some degree of jealousy and distrust. If he had ^^^^^ oj" 

been so inclined, it would have been impossible for him to aud position 

have coalesced with the Tories : for they unreasonably con- °^ B>o»g^i- 

' •' J am at com- 

sidered that he was an enemy to the monarchy. As yet, the mencement 
Eadicals could liardly be considered a party, and Brougham j.ejg„ 
could not join them without lowering himself to the level 
of Cobbett and Hunt. But what discouraged him more, he 
was by no means flourishing in his profession. He made 
no progress on the circuit. In London his House of Lords 
business had left him from his neglecting it, and he only 
expected to be employed on extraordinary occasions in the 
Courts of law. In common suits, I myself was sometimes 
opposed to him which I thouglit a luxury ; for his name 
gave a sort of celebrity to every trial he was engaged 
in, and if the verdict could by indiscreet management go 
against him he was sure to confer the splendour of victory 
on his opponent. Eeports were circulated that he was about 
to leave the bar in des[)air, and to devote himself exclusively 
to politics. 

A most marvellous revolution was at hand. In the course 
of a few months his parliamentary was merged in his forensic 
reputation, and for a time he held a liigher position at the 
bar than any man in England ever did before, or probably 
ever will again. Caroline of Brunswick was now Queen of 
Great Britain, and Brougham was about to defend her upon 

VOL. VIII. u 



290 EEIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 

CHAP, a charge which affected her honour and her life — the pro- 
' fligate, styled " our most religious and gracious King," being 
her prosecutor, the Imperial Parliament being her Judges, 
and all Europe looking on as spectators of the trial. 
Unhappy Whatever may have been the failings or the faults of 

Caroline of the Unhappy Caroline, it is impossible not to pity her for the 
Brunswick, advcrsc circumstanccs in her career over which she had no 
control, and which had a powerful tendency to involve her 
in difficulties and disgrace. Although her father was one of 
the bravest of men, and her mother one of the most vii'tuous 
of women, she had been educated in a Court where purity 
was little regarded, and vice was doubly mischievous from 
the grossness by which it was accompanied. The match witli 
the heir to the British Crown seemed splendid, but she found 
herself united to a heartless voluptuary, who had already 
gone through the religious ceremony of marriage with another 
lady, and who treated his lawful wife with contumely, — till 
at last he renounced all right over her as a husband, and gave 
her a liceuse to follow his example in forgetting that the 
conjugal relation had ever subsisted between them. Driven 
into doubtful society, she became wholly indifferent to public 
opinion, and if imputations were cast upon her which were 
unjust, she was guilty at all events of levity and indecorum 
which seriously compromised her fair fame. As she certainly 
had experienced harsh usage in England, justified by nothing 
which she had done here, contending parties in the State, and 
selfish individuals, under pretence of vindicating her wrongs, 
seized upon them as property which they could convert to 
their own purposes, caring little for her honour or her welfare. 
While the belief prevaik^d that the heir-apparent still fostered 
liis long professed attachment to the Whigs, the Tories, with 
the view of disparaging his character and lowering his in- 
fluence, declared themselves her champions, and were loud 
in her praise. Even grave and decent men, like Lord Eldon 
and ]\Ir. Perceval, wrote and printed a book to establish her 
innocence, and to bold up lier accusers to public execration. 
J)ut when, from the permanent insanity of George III., the 
I^rince of Wales bad become Ixegent without restrictions, and 
when, imbibing from a lady of high rank, who was considered 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 291 

to be his mistress, a new zeal for the Protestant faith, he had ^^^^■^• 
renounced Lord Grey and the friends to Catholic emancipa- ' 

tion, and had manifested an intention to retain in office his 
father's Ministers, this " Book " was suppressed, and all inter- 
course between the Princess and the Tory leaders was put 
an end to for ever. Till the commencement of the new 
reign, however, they did not become her active persecutors. 
On the contrary, they were secretly disposed still to do 
her a good turn, and they discountenanced the proposal 
of bringing her to trial which was urged by her husband, 
and was strongly supported by Sir John Leach, who hoped 
thereby to become Lord Chancellor, instead of dying Master 
of the Rolls. 

The Princess, when abandoned by her Tory advisers, fell, Broughain 
as I have before explained, into the hands of Mr. Brougham, leaTfad- ^ 
the most enter[)rising, the most insinuating, the most accom- ^^'*^^- 
plished, and the most unscrupulous of the Liberal party. 
She tried to form a political connection with Lord Grey and 
Lord Grenville, who, being now discarded by her husband, 
she thought would eagerly embrace her cause ; but from 
the "Delicate Investigation" directed by them during the 
administration of " All the Talents," they had become aware 
of the perils to which any intimacy with her might lead, and 
they kept themselves at a dignified distance from all her 
intrigues. Brougham, who had still his fortune to make, 
could hardly be expected to be so squeamish. He put forth 
all his great powers of pleasing, and soon firmly established 
himself in her confidence ; and for the present he was per- 
fectly contented with the distinction which he enjoyed as 
first law-adviser to the Princess of Wales, and the certainty 
that ere loug he must be Attorney General to the Queen 
of England, the reign of George IIL being already the 
longest in our annals, and, from the enfeebled state of his 
bodily as well as of his mental health, being likely very soon 
to close. 

Court favour no adherent of Caroline could hope for under 
George IV., but from the irregular life which His Majesty 
had led, the general expectation (afterwards verified) was 
that the space of time he would occupy the throne in his 

u 2 



292 EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, own right would be brief, and Brougham had the brilliant 
' prospect of another reign looming in the distance; for he 
had won the confidence of the youthful Charlotte of 
The Wales, next heir to the monarchy. This hopeful Princess 

cSoTteof ^^^ ^^^^ residing with a separate establishment under a 
Wales. governess, in Warwick House, having leave rarely, and 
with severe restrictions, to visit her mother, who occupied 
a mansion in Connaught Place. On these occasions oppor- 
tunity was taken to praise Mr. Brougham in her hearing as 
one of the greatest of lawyers as well as of orators, and she 
was taught to look upon him with kindness as the adviser, 
friend, and protector of her mother. The sad differences 
between her parents it had been impossible to conceal from 
her, and although she spoke and tried to think respectfully 
of her father, she was naturally inclined to take her mother's 
side, and she complained bitterly of the restraints under 
which she lived, making Warwick House little better than 
imprisonment in the Tower of London. However, all went 
on without any public disclosure till the proposal was made, 
and, notwithstanding her declared antipathy, pressed upon her, 
that she should marry the Prince of Orange. 
Her elope- At last, in the month of July, 1814, aU her attendants 
being suddenly changed, she became alarmed lest there 
should be an intention to force her inclinations ; and one 
fine evening, as twilight was thickening, she made her escape 
all alone from Warwick House, ran along the pavement 
unnoticed, amidst a crowd of foot-passengers, to Charing 
Cross, then jumped into a hackney coach, and, with the 
aid of a promised bribe, drove rapidly to Connaught 
Place. Her mother ^^as from home, having gone to pass 
the day at Bla(;kheath. The princess sent a messenger 
for Miss Elphinstone, who had boon her playmate, and 
for ]\Ir. Brougham, whose advice she intended to solicit. 
Wh(!u Mr. Brougham arrived he found her with ]\Iiss 
Elphinstone. He implored her to return immediately to 
Warwiolv House, so that her flight might not be publicly 
known. tShc expressed a detorniinod resolution tliat she 
would not voluntarily again submit to captivity. A\'hile this 
discussion was going on her mother returned, accompanied 



ment 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 293 

by Lady Charlotte Lindsay. The debate was resumed, and CHAP. 
Caroline (to her honour) concurred in the recommendation of ' 

immediate return to Warwick House, but Charlotte became 
more violent in her refusal. Brougham laid down the law to 
her, explaining how, in the reign of George IL, all the judges 
had signed an opinion that, by virtue of the prerogative, the 
reigning sovereign has a right to control the custody and 
education of all the branches of the royal family during their 
minority. While he was yet speaking, in came Lord Chan- 
cellor Eldon, the Duke of York, and the Duke of Sussex, 
who had all arrived at the same moment, in different hackney 
coaches, from distant parts of the town. The Princess 
Charlotte's escape being discovered, she had been traced to 
Connaught Place, and messengers had been sent off in all 
directions to those who, it was supposed, had authority or 
influence over her. She at last yielded to the reiterated 
remonstrances and entreaties of those who now surrounded 
her. But before she would consent to return she directed 
the following declaration to be drawn up, which she dictated, 
and which was signed by all present : 

" I am resolved never to maiTy the Prince of Orange. If it 
shall be seen that such a match is announced, I wish this my 
declaration to be borne in mind, that it will be a marriage 
against my will. And I desire that my uncle, the Duke of 
Sussex, and Mr. Brougham, will particularly take notice of this." 

Day now began to dawn. It so happened that an election 
for the city of Westminster was going forward, so that the 
mob were beginning to collect, and to shout out the names of 
the popular candidates. Brougham, according to his own 
account,* then led the youthful princess into a balcou}^, from 
which could be seen streets, and a square, and the parks at a 
distance, and thus addressed her : — 

" I have only to show your Royal Highness a few hours Broughams 
later, on the spot where you now stand, and all the people of j*^^''*^® *° 
this vast metropolis would be gathered together on that place 
with one common feeling in your behalf; but, the trinmph of 
one hour must be dearly purchased by the consequences which 



* Edinburgh Kcview, vol. Ixvii. 35. 



294 



EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAP. 
III. 



Object of 
the Regent 
to drive 
Caroline 
abroad. 



lirougliani's 
advice to 
her to re- 
main in 
Kngland. 



must assuredly follow in the next — when the troops would pour 
in, and quell all resistance to the clear and undoubted law of 
the land with the certain effusion of blood; nay, your Eoyal 
Highness should know that through the rest of your life, you 
never would escape the odium, which in this countiy always 
attends those who, by breaking the law, occasion such calamities." 
" This consideration," says Lord Brougham, in concluding his 
narrative of the royal elopement, " much more than any quailing 
of her dauntless spirit, or faltering of her filial affection, is 
believed to have weighed upon her mind, and induced her to 
return home." 

Between four and five she reached Warwick House, in the 
care of her governess. All the inhabitants of the metropolis 
were informed at breakfast, by the morning journals, of her 
nocturnal ramble ; but the part which Mr. Brougham acted 
in it remained unknown till after the death of both mother 
and daughter, when he published it to the world. 

The Regent ought now to have been one of the most 
applauded princes who ever sate upon the throne. After the 
overthrow of Napoleon he received a visit from the Emperors 
of Austria and Russia, the King of Prussia, and many other 
foreign potentates; and Louis XYIII. returning to France 
declared that he owed his restoration to the Regent. But 
all this profited him nothing while Caroline was in England 
ready at any moment to cross his path, like his evil genius. 
His great object was to drive her abroad, and this he accom- 
plished by refusing to receive at court any one who associated 
with her, and by resorting to every expedient by which he 
could annoy her. Caroline declared that she was afraid if 
she further opposed his wishes upon this point her life would 
not be safe, and that she even trembled for the life of her child. 
Brougham tells us that he considered this a device of the 
Regent to induce her to leave the protection of the English 
nation, and to live in foreign countries where she might 
commit some indiscretion, and where at any rate there would 
be no diiliculty in procuring witnesses to convict her of 
offences which miglit lead to her degradation. " Therefore 
it was," said Brougham, in a speocli deIiv(M-ed in 1820 during 
the parliamentary inquiry into \wv coiuluct. "tluit foreseeing 
all tlicso fatal consequences of a foreign residence, years ago 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 295 

I told her and her illustrious daughter, in a letter yet extant, CHAP, 
how willingly I would answer with my head for the safety of ' 



both in this country ; but how impossible it was to feel safe 
for an hour if either should go abroad, abandoning the pro- 
tection Avhich the character of the people, still more than the 
justice of the law in England, throws around all its inha- 
bitants." 

It is well known that in 1814 she did leave England for Her conduct 
her travels in Germany, Italy, and the Holy Land, which countries. 
afterwards became so disgustingly notorious. Brougham 
still corresponded with her, and was regarded as her repre- 
sentative. The rumours of her misconduct reached him and 
seem to have made a very deep impression upon his mind. 
In 1819 it was known that a commission, sent to Milan 
under Mr. Cooke, the Chancery Barrister, had been diligently 
employed in collecting evidence against her; and it was 
stoutly asserted that proofs were forthcoming which would 
effectually bar her claim to mount the throne. A proposal Brougham's 
was then made to Lord Liverpool by Mr. Brougham, on her o^^t^Jj!*'^' 
behalf (but, as he always asserted, without her authority), authority 
that her then income of 35,000^. a year should be secured to should 
her for her life, instead of terminatino^ on the demise of "^'^^'' ^'^" 

. \ . t^ii'ii to 

George III., as provided by the Act of Parliament by which England 
it was conferred, and that she should undertake, upon that 
arrangement being made, to reside permanently abroad and Queen 
never to assume the rank or title of Queen of England. 
The government only replied that there would be no in- 
disposition at the proper time to entertain the principle on 
which the proposal was grounded, if it met with the approba- 
tion of Her Boyal Highness. The negotiation, however, went 
no farther while George III. survived. Enemies of Brougham 
suggested that he wished to gain favour with the Regent by 
bringing about such a treaty ; but my sincere and firm 
conviction is that he would at no time have advised her to 
accept any terms which he did not consider for her advantage. 
From his conduct I infer that he then concluded, jrivinff 
faith to statements wliich lie had heard, that it would be 
more prudent to compromise her rights than to insist upon 
them, and that it was better to submit to violent suspicion 



nor take 
the title of 



296 EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, than to clear proof of guilt. Her subsequent indignant 
' refusal of more favourable terms corroborates his assertion 
that the proposal was made without her authority, and only- 
leaves him liable to the charge of rashness and presumption 
in offering, without her authority, for 35,000?. a year to sur- 
render her throne and her character. The proposal gave great 
satisfaction and confidence to the Kegent and his Ministers, 
who, armed with the supposed discoveries of the Milan Com- 
mission, thought that when the time for action arrived they 
must be able to dictate their own terms of degradation. 
A.D. 1820. At last, on the 29th of January, 1820, died George III, 
Scomes ^^^ Caroline was de jure Queen of Great Britain. It is 
Queen on curious that while, by the law and constitution of this 
Georo-eiiL country, the status of the consort of a Queen Kegnant is 
entirely ignored, the rights and privileges of the Consort of a 
King Eegnant are most elaborately and minutely defined. 
If he is a foreigner, the Consort of a Queen Eegnant, 
instead of wearing the crown matrimonial, lives amongst 
us merely as a naturalized alien, with such precedence as 
the Queen may think fit to give him ; but still a com- 
moner, liable to serve in the House of Commons and to 
perform the duties of a parish constable, or any other 
office which may devolve upon a commoner. But the 
moment George IV. was King, Caroline, although still a 
subject, was the first subject in the realm, to be addressed 
as " Her Majesty the Queen," with power of appointing 
her Attorney and Solicitor General to represent her in all 
the King's courts, being entitled to Queen's silver towards 
her maintenance, and all her wants being foreseen and pro- 
vided for, down to her royal stays, which, by the law and 
constitution of England, were to be stiffened by the bones 
of any whale wrecked or cauglit on the Engh'sh shore. 

One of these rights, according to the best authorities, was 
that the Queen Consort should have tlie prayers of the 
Churcli, her name being introduced into the liturgy for tliat 
purpose along with that of her royal husband. This, how- 
ever, was denied by George IV. and his Ministers, and the 
first act of tlio new reign was to direct, very properly, that 
Caroline should no longer be prayed for as Princess of Wales, 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 297 

and very improperly that a new form of prayer for the Royal CHAP. 
Family should be used from which her name was entirely ' 

excluded. The ultimate consequence of this rash proceeding a.d. 1820. 
was the " Queen's Trial," which brought such disgrace upon 
King and Queen, which disgusted the whole world, and which 
nearly brought about a revolution in this country. 

Caroline was sojourning in Italy, when she accidentally 
learned from the public journals that she had become Queen, 
and that her name was excluded from the liturgy. She 
complained loudly, not only of the Government, but of her 
representative, Mr. Brougham, who had declined the preced- 
ing autumn to meet her on the Continent, and had omitted 
to send despatches to inform her of her new position. Never- She ap- 
theless, she soon renewed her correspondence with him, and Brougham 
exercised her prerogative as Queen, by appointing him her her Attoi- 
Attorney General. On his recommendation, she likewise 
appointed his friend, Mr. Denman, her Solicitor General. 

On the first day of Easter Term following. Lord Chief- 
Justice Ellenborough, who had conducted the Delicate 
Investigation, in 1806, and who had a very great dislike 
to Caroline and all connected with her, was obliged to say 
to them in open court, according to the ancient formula : — 

" Her Majesty the Queen, having been pleased to appoint you 
her Attorney and Solicitor General, you will take your places 
within the bar, with the rank belonging to your offices."* 

An unaccountable delay arose in taking any farther pro- Brougham's 
ceedings to determine the Queen's position, each side think- ^nducUu 
ing it prudent to wait till the other should make a new notcom- 

AT ■l■^!~1nk•^T^-^^ t municating 

move. At last, on the 15th oi April, Lord Liverpool trans- to the 
mitted to Mr. Brouj^^hara a proposal to be communicated to ^^^^° '1 

i^ . propcsal 

Her Majesty, which, after reciting that the allowance of intrusted to 
35,000Z. a year to her had ceased by the demise of the ^^^^^^^ ^'' 
Crown, stated that the King was willing to recommend to 
Parliament to settle upon her an annuity of 50,000?. a year 
for life;, provided she would engage not to come into any 
part of the British dominions, and provided she engaged to 
take some other name or title than that of Queen, and not to 

♦ I well remember the sarcastic smile "with which this speech was accompanied. 



298 



EEIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 



CHAP. 
III. 

A.D. 1820. 



Negotia- 
tions 

between the 
King and 
Queen. 



exercise any of the riglits or privileges of Queen, other than 
with respect to the appointment of law officers, 

A mystery now arose, which never has been, and never 
will be cleared up : Mr. Brougham having received this pro- 
posal, did not communicate it to the Queen, and left the 
Government in the belief, that he would obtain an answer to 
it with all convenient speed. When questioned upon the 
subject in Parliament, he declared that his parliamentary 
and professional avocations at that season of the year ren- 
dered it impossible for him to carry it in person to Eome, 
where the Queen then was, that he could not safely trust it 
to other hands, and that he considered that the Government 
could be in no hurry for an answer, or they would have 
resorted to some other channel of communication with her 
Majesty. She wrote a letter to Lord Liverpool, as first 
Minister of the Crown, complaining of her name being left 
out of the liturgy, and of the neglect and ill-usage she 
experienced, and announced her intention of speedily arriv- 
ing in England to assert her rights. This dreadfully alarmed 
her husband, who insisted, that if she persevered in her 
threat, she should, as soon as she set foot on English ground, 
be arrested, committed to the Tower, and brought to trial for 
high treason. He further urged upon his Ministers that, if 
she should prevent this prosecution by remaining on the 
Continent, a bill should immediately be introduced into Par- 
liament to degrade her from her ro5^al state and dignity, and 
to dissolve the marriage between him and the object of his 
detestation. They pointed out to him, that the precedents 
of Ann Boleyn and Katherine Howard, did not apply ; for 
their lovers were guilty of high treason, their offence having 
been committed within the realm, and these queens, al- 
though not directly coming within the Statute of Treasons, 
(25 Edw. HI), were guilty, as accomplices in that treason ; 
but that Bergami, an alien, and owing no allegiance to the 
English Crown, coidd not be guilty of any crime against 
tlie law of England, by any act committed by him in a 
foreign land, and, therefore, that the Queen could not be 
guilty as an accomplice with him. With respect to the \)vo- 
])osod bill, his Majesty was reminded of the great difficulty 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 299 

of proving satisfactorily by foreign witnesses, the alleged CHAP, 
adulterous intercourse ; to his utter horror, he was told that ' 

she would certainly attempt to recriminate, and that if she a.d. 1820. 
succeeded, the divorce might be withheld ; in very delicate 
terms, allusion was made to the manner in which she had 
been at first received by her husband, and of the manner in 
which she had been turned adrift by him ; the scandal which 
the investigation would create, was strongly dwelt upon by the 
decorous Lord Liverpool ; and Lord Castlereagh, though one of 
the most stout-hearted of men, declared that he looked forward 
with fear and trembhng to the sympathy which might be 
expressed in her favour, notwithstanding the clearest evidence 
of her guilt. The King was in a fury, and talked of chang- 
ing his Ministers ; but Sir John Leach stood alone in ad- 
vising him to pursue violent measures. Lord Wellesley and 
the leading Tories out of office, spoke the same language 
as his cabinet. Pride precluded him from applying to the 
Whigs whom he had deserted; and he said he knew, that 
out of spite to him they were all ready to rally round the 
Queen. He was obliged reluctantly to yield, and to consent 
to this compromise, that, all notion of a prosecution for high 
treason being dropped, there should be no parliamentary 
proceeding against her, provided she would agree to reside 
abroad on the terms proposed to her ; but that if she should 
come to England to demand her rights, a bill should be 
introduced at any risk, to dissolve the marriage, and to 
degrade her from her status as Queen. From the tardiness 
of her proceedings hitherto since her legal rights accrued, 
and from the proposal which had been previously made by 
her chief law adviser (supposed not to have been without her 
privity). Ministers were sanguine in the expectation that when 
the crisis arrived, she would shrink from the threatened 
investigation. But they did not sufficiently calculate upon 
her indomitable spirit, which, whether arising from con- 
scious innocence or not, was ready to disregard all conse- 
quences in asserting her right to be the crowned Queen of 
England. 

13y a hitter of hers from Eomo, detailing hor wrongs, 
which was published in all the journals, a strong sympathy 



300 



EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAP, in her favour had been excited in the public mind ; and 
' she now believed that, availing herself of this sympathy, 



Conference 
at St. 
Omer. 



A.D. 1820. she might come and dictate her own terms. Accordingly, 
she began her journey from Italy, with the avowed pur- 
pose of confronting her husband at St. James's. She made 
a stop at Geneva, and invited Mr. Brougham to meet her 
there ; but he suggested that some place nearer England 
would be more convenient, and St. Omer was fixed upon. 
It was arranged, that here there should be a conference, 
with a view to an amicable arrangement. Accordingly, 
Lord Hutchinson on the part of the King, and ]\Ir. Broug- 
ham on the part of the Queen, left London, and travelled 
together to St. Omer, — where, on the 3rd of June, they 
found Queen Caroline. Mr. Brougham immediately waited 
upon her Majesty, and informed her that Lord Hutchinson 
had come in the spirit of sincere friendship, to make some 
proposals to her in his Majesty's name. She replied that 
she would be happy to see him ; and Lord Hutchinson 
was accordingly introduced to her. But at this interview 
nothing occurred beyond conversation on indifferent sub- 
jects. The King's negotiator, it seems, expected that an 
overture was to come from the other side, or that an answer 
was at last to be given to Lord Liverpool's proposal, which 
had been communicated to the Queen's Attorney General. 
In the course of the same day, the following note was trans- 
mitted to Lord Hutchinson : — 

" Mr. Brougham having humbly submitted to the Queen, that 
he had reason to believe that Lord Hutchinson had brought over 
a proposition from the King to her Majesty, — the Queen has 
been pleased to command Mr. Brougham to request Lord 
Hutchinson to communicate any such proposition as soon as 
possible in writing. June 4, 1820." 

Lord Hutchinson's answer, after stating that he was not 
authorised to make an offer in any specific form of words, 
went on to say : — 

" His Majesty's Ministers propose that 50,000Z. per annum 
should bo settled on the Queen for life, subject to such conditions 
as the King may impose. I have also reason to know that the 
conditions likely to be imposed by His Majesty are, that the 



A.D. 1820. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 301 

Queen is not to assume the style and title of Queen of CHAP. 
England, or any title belonging to the Eoyal Family. A con- 
dition is also to be attached to this grant, that she is not to 
reside in any part of the United Kingdom, or even to visit 
England. The consequence of such a visit will be an immediate 
message to Parliament and an entire end to all compromise and 
negotiation. The decision, I may say, is taken to proceed against 
her as soon as she sets foot on the British shores." 

The very instant the Qaeen had read this epistle she The Queen 
ordered post horses, and she drove off for Calais with the England to 
utmost possible speed. Mr. Brouo-ham was not answerable cjajmher 

^ . ^ . ^ rights. 

for the determined resolution she had formed, and he was not 
conscious that she was gone till he saw from a window in the 
hotel her carriage hastening away. The moment that she 
reached Calais she hurried on board an English packet boat 
in the harbour, from an apprehension that if she remained on 
shore difficulties might be thrown in the way of her embarka- 
tion. The following day she landed at Dover, amidst the 
plaudits of an immense multitude, who had assembled on the 
beach to welcome her, and she pursued her journey in a 
triumphal procession to London. 

Brougham was severely but inconsistently blamed for the 
result of this negotiation. He was charged by the King's 
friends with causing the rupture that he might take advan- 
tage of the popularity which now attended the Queen's cause. 
On the other hand, the enthusiastic partisans of the Queen 
not only accused him of lukewarmness but of treachery, 
asserting that he wished to have brought about a compromise 
dishonourable to the Queen, with a view to "curry favour 
with the King." Such suspicions actually entered the mind She is sus- 
of the Queen herself. She now put herself entirely under the Brougham. 
guidance of Alderman Wood, who went by the sobriquet of 
Absolute Wisdom. Apartments in a royal palace being 
denied to her, she lodged in his house in South Audley- 
street, and he stood by her as her Lord Chamberlain when 
she received deputations and addresses, which poured in 
upon her from all parts of the kingdom. By his advice she 
made an attempt to supersede Brougham as her chief legal 
adviser, and Mr. Scarlett (afterwards Lord Abinger), then the 



302 REIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 

CHAP, most eminent advocate at the English bar, was applied to ; 
' but he declined the honour, and the Aldermanic council 



A.D. 1820. resolved that Brougham should continue as her Attorney 
General, ostensibly to conduct her affairs, but that Mr. Wilde 
(afterwards Lord Chancellor Truro), then rising into practice 
at the common law bar, should be associated with him. In 
this gentleman Alderman Wood very properly placed implicit 
confidence, for he was strictly honourable, sincere, and disin- 
terested. It was vulgarly said that he was a spy upon 
Brougham, but I believe that they, along with Mr. Den man, 
the Queen's Solicitor General, always acted cordially and 
harmoniously, and with the undivided object of doing what 
they considered most for the advantage of their royal mistress. 
The Green They Were speedily called into action, for the very day of 
^^* the Queen's arrival in London a message was brought down 

from the King to both Houses of Parliament, communicating 
certain papers sealed up in a green bag, respecting the 
conduct of her Majesty, -^'hich he recommended to their 
immediate and serious attention, observing : — " That he felt 
the most anxious desire to avert the necessity of disclosures 
and discussions which must be as painful to his people as to 
himself ; but that the step now taken by the Queen left him 
no alternative." 

A lively debate arose in the House of Commons upon 
the negotiations at St. Omer, and the terms offered to 
the Queen were denounced as unjust, cruel, and insulting. 
Brougham was in his place, but he contented himself with 
complaining of an imperfect statement which had appeai*ed 
in the newspapers, professing to narrate the transactions in 
which he had borne a part, and of tlie publication of Lord 
Hutchinson's letter, attributing this to "a breach of con- 
fidence which he was at a loss to account for." The common 
opinion had been that he himself had communicated the 
letter to the newspapers. From its harsh and unguarded 
phraseology it had deeply roused the public indignation, and 
operated powerfully in the Queen's favour. At that time the 
fact was not known that Brougham himself Imd spontaneously 
proposed nearly the same terms on her behalf when Princess 
of Wales. 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 303 

It is impossible to deny that liitlierto his conduct in this CHAP. 
aiFair had been wavering, mysterious, and suspicious. Hence- ' 



forth he proceeded in an open, bold, and skilful manner, so as a.d. 1820. 
to rescue the Queen from the destruction to which she Brougham 
seemed to be doomed, to make the King tremble on his boidiyrand' 
throne, and to gain for himself immortal renown. skilfully, 

The plan of the Government was to hurry on the pro- of the 
secution as rapidly as possible, and to stun the nation by the Q"^^°- 
immediate explosion of the green bag. The following day June 7th. 
was fixed for moving, in the House of Commons, an address 
to the King, thanking him for his gracious message; but 
before the debate began Mr. Brougham read to the House 
of Commons the following communication which he had 
composed : — 

" Tlie Queen thinks it necessary to inform the House of Com- 
mons, that she has been induced to return to England in conse- 
quence of the measures pursued against her honour and her 
peace for some time past by secret agents abroad, and lately 
sanctioned by the conduct of the Government at home ; and that 
in adopting this course, her Majesty has had no other purpose 
whatsoever, but the defence of her character, and the maintain- 
ance of those just rights, which have devolved upon her by the 
death of that revered monarch, in whose high honour and un- 
shaken affection she had always found her surest support. 

" Upon her arrival, the Queen is surprised to find that a 
message has been sent down to Parliament, requiring its atten- 
tion to written documents; and she learns with still greater 
astonishment that there is an intention of proposing that these 
should be refcn'ed to a secret committee. It is this day fourteen 
years since the first charges were brought forward against her 
Majesty. Then, and upon every occasion during that long 
period, she lias shown the utmost readiness to meet her accusers, 
and to court the fullest inquiry into her conduct. She now also 
desires an open investigation, in which slio may see both the 
charges and the witnesses against her — a privilege not denied to 
the meanest subject of the realm. 

" In tlie face of the sovereign, the Parliament, and the country, 
slio soh.'mnly protests against the formation of a secret tribunal 
to examine documents privately prepared by her adversaries, as 
a proceeding unknown to the law of the land, and a flagrant 
violation of all the principles of justice : she relics wilh full 



304 



EEIGN OF GEOKGE IV. 



CHAP. 
III. 



A.D. 1820. 



His threats 
of retalia- 
tion against 
tlie KiuiT. 



confidence upon the integrity of the House of Commons for 
defeating the only attempt she has any reason to fear. 

" The Queen cannot forbear to add, that, even before any pro- 
ceedings were resolved upon, she has been treated in a manner 
too well calculated to jorejudge her cause. The omission of her 
name in the Liturgy, the withholding the means of conveyance 
usually afforded to all the branches of the Eoyal Family, the re- 
fusal even of an answer to her application for a place of residence 
in the tojrI mansions, and the studied slights, both of English 
ministers abroad, and of the agents of all foreign Powers over 
whom the English Government has any influence, must be 
viewed as measures designed to prejudice the world against her, 
and could only have been justified by trial and conviction." 

Lord Castlereagh having then moved that the papers in 
the green bag should be referred to a Select Committee 
to report their observations thereupon to the House, Mr. 
Brougham delivered a very able and dexterous speech, 
evidently betraying apprehension of the evidence which 
might be adduced against the Queen, and having for its 
object, by alarming the opposite side, to obtain delay and a 
compromise on advantageous terms. Having pointed out the 
unfairness of prejudicing the case by the Eeport of a com- 
mittee which the prosecutor had named, to be founded upon 
garbled documents which the prosecutor might think fit to 
lay before them, he thus glanced at the nature of the inquiry 
on v^hich the Government proposed to enter : — 

" Xot merely was the Queen's character at stake — not merely 
must the treatment she had received be investigated, but all 
the private history of all those exalted individuals to ^vhom she 
was related, might be forced into the conflict. He must be a 
sagacious man who could pretend to describe the course which 
the inquiry might take — who could assert what steps men 
bound by professional ties to regard nothiug but the safety of 
their client, might think it necessary to recommend. He must 
be a bold man who would say, that if he were in the situation 
of a professional adviser of the Queen, he would hesitate one 
moment in securing his client at any tlespcrate expense. The 
advocate has only one point to look to. He is ruined, disgraced, 
degraded — he may render himself fit to be at the head of a 
Milan Commission — if ho regards the fatal consequences to 
others which may arise from oblaining *a good deliverance' for 



A.D. 1820. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 305 

the accused party he has undertaken to defend. He must be a CHAP, 
bolder man still who would rashly plunge this country into a 
state of irritation and confusion, while there remains a possi- 
bility of amicable adjustment. For God's sake — for the sake of 
all who are honourable and just — for the sake of those whose 
memories may deceive them, whose wishes may mislead, whose 
blindness may beguile them — for the sake of the wives and 
daughters of all who love decency and morality, and who recol- 
lect when but a few years since, the opening of a newspaper was 
regarded with fear and disgust by the father of every modest 
and well-conducted family* — ^I call upon the House to pause, 
only to pause, to ascertain if it be not yet possible to escape 
from this threatened calamity. The Queen thinks it necessary 
for the clearing of her own honour, that the inquiry should be 
persisted in to the end ; she shrinks not from it ; she courts it ; 
she is prepared to meet it ; she comes from safety into — I will 
not say jeopardy, because the innocent in this land of law and 
liberty can know no jeopardy — but trouble, vexation, and anxiety 
— to go through this painful, and in my view, odious and fright- 
ful investigation. I have the honour of being a servant of her 
Majesty; I have also the honour of being a member of this 
House. As her Majesty's servant, I would not disobey her 
commands, and where her honour is at stake, I would do my 
best to defend it ; but, in the upright performance of my duty 
in this House, I feel called upon even to thwart her Majesty's 
inclination, and I would tell her — ' Madam, if negotiation yet 
be possible, rather go too far, and throw yourself upon your 
countiy, and upon Parliament for your vindication, than not go 
far enough ; if yet it be possible to avert the ruin which threatens 
the nation, your honour being safe, be ready to sacrifice all 
besides.' If I might advise those who stand in a similar situa- 
tion with respect to the King, I would say to them — ' act like 
honest men, and disregard all consequences — tender that counsel 
to your sovereign which the case demands, and do not fear that 
Parliament will betray you, or the country desert you. Do not 
apprehend that even political calamity will attend 3'ou ; for if 
successors must be appointed to your places, be sure that they 
will not be found within these walls.' " 

This speech made a deep impression, wliicb was strengthened 
by Mr. Canning's chivalrous declaration in favour of the 
Queen; and Mr. Wilberforce, observing that nothing but 

♦ Alluding, I presume, to the parliamentary inquiry respecting the Duke of 
York and Mrs. Clarke. 

VOL. VIII. X 



306 



REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAP. 
III. 



A.D. 1820. 



Diplomacy 
resorted to. 



the absolute despair of any reconciliation or adjustment would 
induce him to abandon the course which he now felt it his 
duty to adopt, moved, with a view to renewed negotiation, 
an adjournment of the debate. This was carried by acclama- 
tion. 

Two days were spent in waiting to see from which side the 
overture was to come, the King and Queen having re- 
spectively declared that each must first know what the other 
offered. At last her Majesty's resolution yielded to the 
strong remonstrances of her legal advisers, and the following 
note was transmitted on her behalf to Lord Liverpool : — 

" The Queen commands Mr. Brougham to inform Lord Liver- 
pool, that she has directed her most serious attention to the 
declared sense of Parliament, as to the propriety of some amicable 
adjustment of existing differences being attempted ; and sub- 
mitting to that high authority with the gratitude due to the 
protection she has alv^^ays received from it, her Majesty no 
longer waits for a communication from the Ministers of the 
Crown, but commands Mr. Brougham to announce her own 
readiness to consider any arrangement that can be suggested, 
consistent with her dignity and honour. 9th Jime, 1820." 

An answer was immediately received, refen*ing the Queen 
to the memorandum delivered to Mr. Brougham by Lord 
Liverpool on the 15th of April. The Queen's reply by Mr. 
Brougham stated the extraordinary fact that this proposal 
was only then for the first time communicated to her, the 
reason assigned being that it appeared to have been super- 
seded by the mission of Lord Hutchinson to St. Omer. After 
some further correspondence, in which it was laid dovm on 
the behalf of the Queen that the recognition of her rank and 
privileges as Queen must be the basis of any admissible 
arrangement, it was agreed that two of his Majesty's confi- 
dential servants, in concert with the like number of persons 
to be named by the Queen, should frame an arrangement to 
bo submitted to his IMajesty, for settling the necessary par- 
ticulars of her ]\rajesty's future situation. Accordingly, the 
Duke of Wellington and Lord Castleroagh on behalf of 
the King, and Mv. Ikougham and IMr. Donman on behalf 
of the Queen, met at the Foreign Oflice and held five confe- 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 307 

rences, of whicli formal protocols were raade and signed by CHAP, 
the plenipotentiaries. ' 



Little progress was ever made in the negotiation, and it a.d. 1820. 
finally broke off on the refusal to restore the Queen's name Rupture of 
to the liturgy, — a condition demanded as a sine qua non to ation.^^^ '' 
her consenting to reside abroad. The truth was that minis- 
ters had gone too far now to concede this point without a 
confession of wrongful conduct to her, and this confession 
would have been very injurious to themselves, as well as to 
the dignity of their master. At the same time the public 
voice had become so strong in support of the Queen, that she 
and her advisers concluded that she was safe whatever evi- 
dence might be adduced against her. 

" All men said, if blame there was, a far larger share of it fell 
on her royal husband than on herself. When it was found that 
he, the wrong-doer, was resolved to visit upon his victim the 
consequences of his own offences — when it was known that he 
whose whole life since his marriage, had been a violation of his 
marriage vows, was determined to destroy his consort after 
deserting and ill-using her — and when it was announced that his 
design was to obtain a release from the nuptial ties which had 
never for an hour held him fast, on the pretence of the party so 
deeply injured by his inconstancy and his oppression having at 
length fallen into the snares set for her, — the public indignation 
knew no bounds, and all the people with one voice exclaimed 
against a proceeding so indecently outraging every principle of 
humanity and of justice. Whether the facts alleged were true or 
false, the people never gave themselves a moment's trouble to 
inquire ; and if the whole case should be confessed, or should be 
proved, it was quite the same thing ; he who had done the wrong 
had no right to take advantage of it, and if any one tittle of the 
charges made had been admitted by the party accused, the 
people were resolved to stand between her and her persecutor's 
injustice." * 

The Select Committee of the Lords to whom the green j„iy 4. 
bag was referred, having reported that the charges against 
the Queen ought to become the subject of solemn inquiry, 
which might best be effected in the course of a legislative 

* Introduction to Lord Brougham's Speeches, published by him, 1838. 
Vol. i. p. 88. 

X 2 



308 EEIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 

^^AP. proceeding, Lord Liverpool introduced "A Bill to deprive her 

' Majesty Queen Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of the title, pre- 

A.D. 1820. rogatives, rights, and privileges of Queen Consort of this 

July 5. realm, and to dissolve the marriage between his Majesty and 

Pains and the Said Caroline Amelia Elizabeth." The bill was imme- 

Penaities diately read a first time, and a copy of it ordered to be sent 

to her Majesty. Xext day she presented a petition that her 

counsel should forthwith be heard against the principle of 

the bill, and the mode of proceeding adopted. An order was 

accordingly made that counsel should be called on, and Mr. 

Brougham appeared at the bar. 

Preliminaiy Being informed by the Lord Chancellor in pursuance of a 

respecti'n"g * prcvious resolution of the House that he must now confine 

'**■ himself to *' the mode and manner of proceeding to be had 

on the bill, and the time when those proceedings should take 

place," he addressed the peers in a tone of defiance, and 

poured out sarcasms against them, to which they had been 

previously little accustomed, but with which, before the trial 

was over, he rendered them familiar. A little specimen must 

suffice for the present : — 

" It has been argued, I am informed, by the promoters of this 
bill, that my illustrious client is to be dealt with as if she were 
the lowest, not the highest, subjeet in the realm. God grant 
that she were in the situation of the lowest subject in the realm. 
God grant that she had never risen to a higher rank than the 
humblest individual who owed allegiance to his Majesty. She 
would then have been fenced round by the triple fence whereby 
the law of England guards the life and honour of the poorest 
female. Before such a bill could have been introduced against 
any other individual, there must have been a sentence of divorce 
in the Consistory Court, there must have been a verdict of a 
jury who might have sympathised with her feelings, who, 
being taken from the same rank of life as herself, and knowing 
that the evidence produced against her might under similar 
circumstances bo produced against their waves and daughters, 
would have been influenced by a desire to guard against a com- 
mon danger. There would then have been among her judges 
none w^ho were the servants of her husband, for her counsel 
would have had the right of challenging all such — none who 
wore hired by him during his pleasure — none who were placed 
in a situation to feci gratitude for the past or expectation for the 



A.D. 1820. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 309 

future favours whicli be liad it in Ms power to bestow. She CHAP, 
would liave been tried by twelve honest, impartial, and disin- 
terested Englishmen, — at whose doors the influence which may 
act upon her present judges might agitate for years, without 
making the slightest impression either upon the hopes or the 
fears which it was calculated to excite. She has, therefore, good 
cause to lament that she is not the lowest subject of his Majesty, 
and I can assure your Lordships that she would willingly 
sacrifice everything, except her honour, which is dearer to her 
than her life, to obtain the poorest cottage which has ever 
sheltered an Englishwoman from injustice." 

He was several times called to order for exceeding the 
limits prescribed to him, but only to give him a fresh advan- 
tage, and at last he thus concluded : — 

" With the confidence of injured innocence she flings herself 
upon the House, and trusts that no mixture of paity — no 
presence of interested persons — no adventitious influence exer- 
cised out of doors — no supposed want of sympathy with the 
feelings of the country — no alleged, though falsely alleged, 
tendency on the part of your Lordships to truckle to royal 
favour, will stand between the Queen and justice, or prevent 
her case from receiving a fair, impartial, and unprejudiced 
decision." 

The House having refused a very reasonable request that 
tbe Queen might be furnished with a list of the witnesses to 
be produced against her, and a specification of the times and 
places where the offence charged against her was supposed 
to have been committed, proceeded to the second reading of I7th Aug. 
the bill ; but, before receiving evidence, admitted an argu- 
ment against tlie principle of the bill, which raised the ques- 
tion whether, even if the preamble could be proved alleging 
her guilt, this was the fit mode of proceeding against her. 

Mr. Brougham attempted to distinguish the present from 
all other bills of pains and penalties that had ever been in- 
troduced into Parliament, and contended that the fit course, 
if there were to be any proceedings, would have been by suit 
in the Consistorial Court, or by indictment or by impeach- 
ment ; but the weapon to which he chiefly trusted was the 
threat of going into evidence of the King's marriage with 
Mrs. Fitzlierbert before he led Caroline of Jirunswick to the 



310 REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, altar, and of the profligate life which he had subsequently led, 
' so as to show that according to established principles and 
A.D. 1820. uniform practice he was disentitled to ask a divorce : — 

" The right of recrimination," said he, " I could not exercise 
without directly violating the express injunctions of her Majesty ; 
nor is it my pui'pose to resort to that right, unless driven to it 
by absolute and overruling necessity. In obedience to the 
same high command, I lay out of view, as equally inconsistent 
with m}^ own feelings and those of my client, all other questions 
respecting the conduct or connexions of any parties previous to 
marriage. These are dangerous and tremendous topics, the 
consequences of discussing which, at the present moment, I will 
not even trust myself to describe ; but when the necessity 
arrives an advocate knows but one duty, and, cost what it may, 
that duty he must discharge. Be the consequences what they 
may to any other persons, powers, principalities, dominions, or 
nations, an advocate is bound to do his duty, and I shall not 
fail to exert every means in my power to put a stop to the 
progress of this bill. I will appeal to the spirit of holiness, and 
to the heads of the Church now ranged before me, whether 
adultery is to be considered only a crime in woman. Whether 
all of us, nearer to the object, do or do not see through the 
flimsy pretext — be assured that the good sense of the nation 
cannot be deceived, and that those at a distance will be both 
shocked and astonished. In their homely language, they will 
assert that it is an attempt to accomplish one pui-pose under the 
colour of another. ' Here is a man,' they will say, * who wishes 
to get rid of his wife ; he talks of the honour and safety of the 
country, yet its dearest interests, its peace, its morals, and its 
happiness are to be sacrificed to gratify his desires.' I shall 
think it likewise fit to remind your Lordships that it is provided 
by your Lordships' Standing Orders that the husband who 
applies for a divorce shall personally attend the House, in order 
that he may be examined before the divorce is granted, in order 
to show that there is no collusion, that he himself stands rectus 
in curia, and that he himself, having always acted as a kind and 
faithful husband, is entitled to a dissolution of the marriage by 
reason of the infidelity of his wife." 

The Attorney and Solicitor General having spoken on the 
other side, it was plain from the undisguised favour with 
which they were listened to that a large majority of the Lords 
wore still ready to sui)port the bill, and that the trial must 



LIFE OF LOKD BKOUGHAM. 311 

proceed. ]\Ir. Brougham, in his reply, therefore chiefly CHAP, 
applied himself to discredit, by anticipation, the witnesses who ' 



were to be examined. It was known that they were chiefly a.d. 1820. 
Italians ; that they had been brought over to this country by 
agents of the Government ; that many of them were in a low 
condition of life ; that several of them had been new clothed 
at the public expense ; that they were kept together in one 
large dormitory, and fed at a common table. Said Mr. 
Brougham : — 

" If the prosecution is to proceed, we must suppose that the 
charges are to be substantiated by witnesses above all suspicion. 
My impression is, that they must be persons of exacted station, 
or at least looking in their exterior like those persons w^ith whom 
your Lordships are accustomed to associate. This respectable 
external appearance they rejoice in, I doubt not, p-op'io marte. 
They must be seized in fee simple of those decent habiliments 
in which it will be fitting that they should appear before your 
Lordships, and those, too, purchased out of their own ample 
revenues. I suppose they must be persons who can regale 
themselves at their own expense — who can live in separate 
apartments, and can fare sumptuously every day. They surely 
cannot be persons who are called together by the ringing of a 
bell, or the beating of a drum, to a common meal, provided at 
the expense of others. At least, they must have full libertj^ of 
locomotion, and when they go abroad no other individual will 
be seen attending them, or watching their motions, but their 
own lacquais de place. To meet a cloud of such witnesses must 
be enough to appal any man." 

The trial proceeded and the first witness was Teodoro Queen's 
Majocchi, postillion to general Pino. If his evidence in chief *^'^^* 
was believed, he proved abundantly enough to establish the 
guilt of the Queen, but he entirely broke down when cross- 
examined by Mr. Brougham ; and to a long succession of 
questions respecting matters of which he must have had a 
lively recollection, the only answer to be obtained from him 
was " Non mi ricordoj' which passed into, and still continue, 
" household words " in England for denoting mendacity. 

The case for the prosecution was not closed till tlie 9th ol 
September. The Queen's Attorney General all the while 
preserved his ascendancy, causing dismay by wliat he did. 



312 REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, and still more by what lie threatened to do. In alluding to 
' the King, his object was to say what should be most cutting 
A.D. 1820. and alarming, without giving an opportunity, decently, to 
call him to order on the ground that he was transgressing the 
limits to be allowed to an advocate, and wantonly insulting 
his sovereign. He claimed the right of considering this as 
a divorce suit, the promoter of which was the husband. To 
deprive counsel of the license which this view of the pro- 
ceeding might be supposed to give, the other side contended 
that the bill was a public measure of the Government for the 
safety of the State. On one occasion, in replying to an 
argument of the Attorney Gleneral to this effect, he said : — 

" After the assertion of my learned friend, I am bound to 
believe that this measure is not to gratify the wishes of the 
King, and that his Majesty looks on with indifference, solicitous 
only that ' right be done.' But who, then, is the prosecutor ? 
What is this mysterious being — 

' that shape hath none 

Distinguishable iu member, joint, or limb ; 

Or substance may be called which shadow seems. 

what seems his head 

The likeness of a kingly crown has on.* " * 

Brougham had a prodigious advantage in the inefficiency 
of Gifford the Attorney General, who, although an acute 
lawyer, had received an imperfect education, was ignorant 
of foreign languages, customs, and manners, and from a 
sense of his defects was diffident, timorous, and easily cowed. 
Copley the Solicitor General, on the other hand, whose 
University education had been followed by foreign travel, 
and who was by nature bold and pugnacious, supported 
the royal cause with such energy as sometimes to give his 
client confident hope of ultimate success. His speech in 
summing up the evidence for the prosecution, was so masterly 
and made such a deep impression, that Brougliam was thrown 
into sad perj)lexity as to the course now to be adopted. 
Afraid to allow this speech to remain unanswered during the 
interval to bo assigned for preparing the Queen's defence, he 

* 'J'his qnotatinn was Huggestod at the moment by a friend who stood near 
him. It produced a groat scn.sniion. Somo Lords afU'rwards said that lie 
ouglil. to have Wvw commiltcd to Newgate or to tlio Tdwcr; but the better 
opinion was that such a stop would only have gratilicd the oflondcr. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 313 

proposed that he should be allowed forthwith to" open his CHAP, 
evidence, an adjournment of some weeks following to enable ' 

him to adduce it, or that he should be permitted to divide a.d. i820. 
his speech, one half of it, commenting upon the evidence 
already given for the prosecution, to be fired off at once, and 
the other half, explaining the evidence for the Queen, to be 
reserved till after the adjournment. But the Lords fairly- 
enough offered him the alternative, to adjourn at the close of 
the case for the prosecution for as long a period as he should 
require to prepare fully for the Queen's defence, or to 
go on continuously without any adjournment till her defence 
should be closed. 

In spite of all the evidence and all the eloquence directed 
against the Queen, the public voice was declaring itself more 
and more loudly in her favour, and it was hoped that the 
increasing agitation would shake the nerves of the King and 
his Ministers, and induce them, under some decent pretence, 
to abandon the bill. An adjournment was therefore prayed ^^v^- ^'~ 
till the 3rd of October. 

Brougham employed a gi-eat part of this time in getting Brougham's 
up his oration by daylight and by the midnight oil. He foiM;he 
boasted much of the pains he had bestowed upon it. The Q^^'""- 
peroration, he says, he wrote over with his own hand seven- 
teen times. He himself considered, and I believe still 
considers, his performance the most wonderful effort of 
genius recorded in the annals of oratory ; and when listened 
to in the excitement and suspense which then prevailed, it 
had very brilliant success ; but I must confess that when 
now read in ])rint, as published by the author, it appears by 
turns stiff and affected, tame and vapid, turgid and declama- 
tory, swarming with i)alpable and bad imitations of ancient 
orators, and altogether much inferior to the unpremeditated 
ebullitions of invective and sarcasm which he had poured 
forth in discussions which had arisen in previous stages of 
the proceedings. Thus he began, and the laboured composi- 
tion niiglit well be mistaken for a schoolboy's translation of 
the proocmium to an oration of Cicero : — 

" The time is now come, my Lords, when I feel 1 shall truly 
stand in need of all your indulgence. It is not merely the 



III. 

A.D. 1820 



EEIGN OF GEOKGE IV. 

CHAP, august presence of this assembly whicli embarrasses me, for I 
have oftentimes had experience of its condescension; nor the 
novelty of this proceeding that perplexes me, for the mind 
gradually gets reconciled to the strangest things ; nor is it the 
magnitude of this cause that oppresses me, for I am borne up and 
cheered by that conviction of its justice which I share with all 
mankind ; but, my Lords, it is the very force of that conviction, 
the knowledge that it operates universally, the feeling that it 
operates riglitl}^, which now dismays me wath the apprehension 
that my unw^orthy mode of handling it may for the first time 
injure it ; and while others have trembled for a guilty client, or 
been anxious in a doubtful case, or crippled with the consciousness 
of some hidden weakness, or chilled b}^ the influence, or dismayed 
by the hostility, of public opinion, I, knowing that here there is 
no guiltiness to conceal, nor anything save the resources of 
perjury to dread, am haunted with the apprehension, that my 
feeble discharge of this duty may for the first time cast that 
cause into doubts, and may turn against me for condemnation 
those millions of your Lordships' countrymen whose jealous eyes 
are now watching us, and who will not fail to impute it to me if 
your Lordships should reverse the judgment w^hich the case for 
the charge has extorted from them. And I feel, my Lords, under 
this weight, so troubled, that I can hardly at this moment, with 
all the reflection whicli the indulgence of your Lordships has 
accorded to me, compose my spirits to the discharge of my 
professional duty, under the weight of that grave responsibility 
which accompanies it." 

Having glanced at the arrival of Caroline of Brunswick 
in England, in 1795, and her departure for the continent 
in 1814, he apologises for not dwelling upon intervening 
events : — 

"I rejoice that for the present at least the most fiiithful 
discharge of my duty permits mc to draw this veil ; but I cannot 
do so without pausing for an instant to guard myself against a 
misrepresentation to which I know this course may not unna- 
turally be exposed, and to assure your Lordships most solemnly, 
that if I did not think that the cause of the Queen, as attempted 
to be cstabli.shed by the evidence against her, not only does not 
recpiire recrimination at present, not only requires no duty of 
even uttering one whisper by way of attack, by way of insinua- 
tion, against the conduct of her illustrious husband — but that it 
prescribes to me, for tlic i>resent, silence upon this great and 
painful topic — I solemnly assure your Lordships that, but for this 



A.D. 1820. 



LIFE OF LOED BKOUGHAM. 315 

conviction, my lips would freely and boldly, unscnipuloiisly and CHx\P. 
remorselessly, pour forth all I know respecting it, and all that 
I should be prepared to prove. In postponing the statement of 
that case, of which I am possessed, I feel confident that I am 
waiving a right which I have, and abstaining from the use of 
materials which are mine. But I feel that if I were now to 
approach the great subject of recrimination I should seem to give 
up the higher ground of innocence, on which I rest my cause. 
I should seem to be Justifying when I plead Not Guilty. I should 
seem to argue in extenuation and in palliation of offences, or 
levities, or improprieties the least and the lightest of which I 
stand here utterly to deny." 

The following is the most pathetic .part of the speech, 
describing the ill usage of the Queen on the occasion of the 
marriaoe and the death of her dauofhter : — 

" An event now took place which, of all others, most excites 
the feelings of a parent : that daughter was about to form a union 
upon which the happiness — upon which, alas! the Queen knew 
too well how much the happiness, or the misery of her future 
life must depend. Ko announcement was made to her Majesty 
of the p]-ojectcd alliance. All England occupied with the subject 
— Europe looking on with an interest which it certainly had in 
so great an event ; England had it announced to her ; Europe 
had it announced to her; each petty German prince had it an- 
nounced to him ; but the one person to whom no notice of it was 
given, was the mother of the bride who was to be espoused. . . . 
She heard it accidentally by a courier who was going to announce 
the intelligence to the Pope — that ancient, intimate, much- valued 
ally of the Protestant Crown of these realms, and with whose 
close friendship the title of the Brunswicks to our Crown is so 
interwoven. A prospect grateful to the whole nation, interesting 
to all Europe, was now afforded, that the marriage would be a 
fruitful source of stability to the Koyal Family of these realms. 
The whole of that period, painfully interesting to a parent as 
well as to a husband, was passed without the slightest communi- 
cation ; and if the Princess Charlotte's own feelings had prompted 
her to open one, she was in a state of anxiety of mind and of 
delicacy of frame, in consequence of that her first pregnancy, 
which made it dangerous to have maintained a struggle between 
power and authority on the one hand, and affection and duty on 
the other. An event most fatal followed, which plunged the 
whole of England into grief; one in which all our foreign neigh- 
bours sympathized ; and while, with a due regard to the feelings 



316 EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



Ill 

A.D. 1820. 



CHAP, of those foreign allies, and even of strange powers and princes 
with whom we had no alliance, that event was speedily com- 
municated by particular messengers to each, the person in all 
the world who had the deepest interest in the event — the person 
whose feelings, above those of all the rest of mankind, were most 
overwhelmed and stunned by it, — was left to be stunned and 
overwhelmed by it accidentally ; as she had, by accident, heard 
of the marriage. But if she had not heard of the dreadful event 
by accident, she would, ere long, have felt it ; for the decease of 
the Princess Charlotte was communicated to her mother by the 
issuing of the Milan Commission and the commencement of the 
proceedings for the third time against her character and her 
life." 

Occupying two days, during the whole of which he fixed 
the unflagging attention of his audience, he went over all the 
instances in which the Queen was supposed to have mis- 
conducted herself, analysing the evidence in support of each, 
and trying to show either that no unfavourable inference was 
fairly to be drawn from it, or that the witnesses who gave it 
were wholly unworthy of credit. He thus powerfully assailed 
the leader of the band : — 

" TJieodore Majocchi, of happy memory, will be long known in 
this country and everj^where else much after the manner in 
which ancient sages have reached our day, whose names are 
lost in the celebrity of the little saying by which each is now 
distinguished by mankind, and in which they were known to 
have embodied the practical result of their owti experience 
and wisdom ; and, as long as those words which he so often 
used in the practice of that art and skill which he had acquired, 
by long experience and much care — as long as these words should 
be known among men, the image of Majocchi, without naming 
him, will arise in their remembrance. My Lords, this person is 
a witness of great importance ; he was the first called and the 
latest examined ; continuing by the case and accompanying it 
throughout. His evidence almost extended over the Avhole of 
the period through which the case and the charge itself extends ; 
in fact, only dismissed, or rather retiring, from the Queen's 
sorsMce, and refused to bo taken back, about the time when the 
charge closed. Ho and Demont stand aloof from the rest of the 
witnesses, and resemble each other in this particular, that they 
go through the whole case. They are, indeed, the great wit- 
nesses to prove it ; they are the witnesses for the bill ; the others 
being confirmatory only of them ; but, as willing witnesses are 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 317 

wont to do — as those who have received much and been promised ^?j^^' 
more — they were zealous on behalf of their employers, and did ' 



not stop short of the two main witnesses, but they each cari'ied ^ j^ ^g9Q 
the case a great deal further. This is, generally, with a view to 
their relative importance, the character of all the witnesses. . . . 
I have often heard it remarked, that the great prevailing feature 
of Majocchi's evidence — his want of recollection — signifies, in 
truth, but little : because a man may forget — memories differ. I 
grant they do. Memories differ, as well as honesty, in man. 
I do not deny that. But I think I shall succeed in showing your 
Lordships, that there is a sort of memory that is utterly inconsis- 
tent with any degree of honesty in any man, which I can figure 
to myself. But why do I talk of fancy? for I have only to 
recollect Majocchi ; and I know cases, in which I def}^ the wit of 
man to conceive stronger or more palpable instances of false 
swearing, than may be conveyed to the hearers and to the court, 
in the remarkable words, ' Non mi ricordo ' — I do not remember. 
I will not detain your Lordships by pointing out cases where the 
answer, ' I do not remember,' would be innocent, where it 
might be meritorious, where it might be confirmatoiy of his 
evidence, and a support to his credit. Neither need I adduce 
cases where such an answer would be the reverse of this — where 
it would be destiiictive to his credit, and the utter demolition of 
his testimony. I will not quote any of these cases. I shall 
content myself with taking the evidence of Majocchi as it stands : 
for if I had been lecturing on evidence, I should have said — as 
the innocent forgetfulness is familiar to every man, so is the 
guilty forgetfulness ; and in giving an instance, I should have 
just found it all in Majocchi's actual evidence. Now, at once, to 
give your Lordships proof positive that this man is perjured — 
proof I shall show to be positive, from his mode of forgetting. 
Li the first place, I beg your Lordships' attention to the way in 
which this witness swore hardily in chief, eke as hardily in 
cross-examination, to the position of the rooms of her Majesty 
and Bergami. The great object of the Attorney General, as 
8h(jwn by his opening, was that for which the previous concoc- 
tion of this plan by these witnesses had prepared him ; viz., to 
prove the position of the Queen's and Bergami's rooms always to 
have been favourable to the commission of adulteiy, by showing 
that they were near and had a mutual communication, whereas 
the rooms of all the rest of the suite wore distant and cut off; 
and the second part of that statement was just as essential as the 
first, to make it the foundation of the inference of guilt which it 



A.D. 1820. 



318 REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, was meant to support. AccordiDgly, the first witness who was 
to go over their whole case appears to have been better prepared 
on this point than any ten that followed — more inferences — more 
forgetfulness in detail — perfect recollection to attack the Queen 
— utter forgetfulness to protect himself from the sifting of a 
cross-examination. ' "Where did the Queen and Bergami sleep ? ' 
'Her Majesty slept in an apartment near that of Bergami.' 
' Were those apartments near or remote ? ' for it was often so 
good a thing to get them near and communicating with each 
other, that it was pressed again and again. * Where were the 
rest of the suite ; were they distant or near ? ' says the Solicitor 
General. This was at Naples ; and this is a specimen of the rest 
— for more was made of that proximity at Naples than ani^-where 
else — ' Were they near or distant ? ' ' They were apart.' 
The word in Italian was lontano, which was interpreted ' apart ; ' 
I remarked, however, at the time, that it meant ' distant ; ' and 
' distant ' it means, or it means nothing. Here, then, the witness 
had sworn distinctly, from his positive recollection, and had 
staked his credit on the truth of a fact, and also of his recollec- 
tion of it — upon this fact, whether or not the Queen's room was 
near Bergami's, with a communication. But no less had he put 
his credit upon this other branch of his statement, essential to the 
first, in order to make both combined the foundation of a charge of 
criminal intercourse, *that the rest of the suite were lodged 
apart and distant.' There is an end then of innocent forget- 
fulness, if, when I come to ask where the rest slept, he either 
tells me, ' I do not know,' or, ' I do not recollect ; ' because he 
had known, and must have recollected, that, when he presumed 
to say to my learned friends, ' these two rooms were alone near 
and connected, the others were distant and apart ; ' when he said 
that, he affirmed his recollection of the proximity of those rooms, 
and the remoteness of the others. lie swore that at first, and 
afterwards said, ' I know not,' ' I recollect not,' and perjured 
himself as plainly as if he had told your Lordships one day that 
he saw a person, and the next day said he never saw him in his 
life ; the one is not a more gross or diametrical contradiction 
than the other. Trace him, my Lords, in his recollection and 
forgetfulness — obsoi-ve where he remembers and where he forgets 
— and you Avill find the same conclusion following j'ou everj-where, 
and forcing the same conviction." 

Having commented upon Mademoiselle Demont and several 
prominent ^vituesses, male and female, with equal severity, 
he said : — 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 319 

My Lords, I take this filthy cargo by sample purposely. Let CHAP. 



those who will, delve into the bulk — I will not heave it more. 
That it is damaged enough the sample tells sufficiently, and with 
a single remark I dismiss it. I recollect, my Lords, these foolish 
stories, not only about the hand and about the bracelet-chains 
being put round her neck, with I know not what other trumpery, 
got up for the purpose of variegating the thrice-told tale. And 
your Lordbhips will, I think, agree with me, that the Italians 
who coined the fiction are pretty much the same now that 
they were known to our ancestors to be a few centuries ago. 
Whether lachimo be the legitimate offspring of our great Shak- 
speare's mind or not, may be doubted; but your Lordships will 
readily recognise more than one of the witnesses, but one espe- 
cially, as the own brother of lachimo. How has he represented 
himself? — 

' I have belied a lady, 



III. 



The princess of tliis country, and the air on't 
Kevengingly enfeebles me — 

mine Italian brain 

'Gan in your duller Britain operate 
Most vilely ; for my vantage, excellent ; 
And, to be brief, my practice so prevailed. 
That I returned with simular proof, enough 
To make the noble Leonatus mad.' 

My Lords, the cases are the same. We have the same evidence, 
from the same country, and for the same purpose, almost with 
the same effects ; and by the same signs, marks, and tokens, by an 
extraordinary coincidence, the two cases are sought to be sub- 
stantiated." 

Having touched upon every topic which could be pressed 
forward in defence of the party accused, and cited with great 
effect the case of Susannah and the elders, he at last came to 
the seventeen times rewritten peroration : — 

" Such, my Lords, is the case now before you ! Such is the 
evidence in support of this measure — evidence inadequate to 
prove a debt — impotent to deprive of a civil right — ridiculous 
to convict of the lowest offence — scandalous if brought forward to 
support a charge of the highest nature which the law knows — 
monstrous to ruin the honour, to blast the name of an Englisli 
Queen ! Wliat shall I say, then, if this is the proof by which an 
act of judicial legislation, a parliamentary sentence, an ex post 
facto law, is sought to bo passed against this defenceless woman ? 



A.D. 1820. 



A.D. 1820. 



320 REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP. My Lords, I pray you to pause. I do earnestly beseecli you to 
take heed ! You are standing upon the brink of a precipice — 
then beware ! It will go forth your judgment, if sentence shall 
go against the Queen. But it will be the only judgment you 
ever pronounced, which, instead of reaching its object, will 
return and bound back upon those who give it. Save the 
country, my Lords, from the horrors of this catastrophe — save 
yourselves from this peril — rescue that countiy, of which you 
are the ornaments, but in which you can flourish no longer, 
when severed from the people, than the blossom when cut oflf 
from the roots and the stem of the tree. Save that country, 
that you may continue to adorn it — save the Crown, which is in 
jeopardy — the Aristocracy which is shaken — save the Altar, 
which must stagger with the blow that rends its kindred Throne ! 
You have said, my Lords, you have willed — the Church and the 
King have willed — that the Queen should be deprived of its 
solemn service. She has instead of that solemnity, the heartfelt 
prayers of the people. She wants no prayers of mine. But I do 
here pour forth my humble supplications at the Throne of Mercy, 
that that mercy may be poured down upon the people, in a 
larger measure than the merits of its rulers may deserve, and 
that your hearts may be turned to justice." 

He delivered the concluding prayer very solemnly and 
impressively in the well-remembered attitude of the presby- 
terian clergy in Scotland, when they bless the congregation 
at the conclusion of public worship — raising both his opened 
palms above his head at the same height, and holding them 
motionless till his voice ceased.* 

He tells us that he himself was so satisfied with the effect 
he had produced on the minds of the judges, that when he 
had finished he resolved not to permit farther addresses on 
the Queen's behalf, nor to call witnesses to prove her inno- 
cence, but at once to demand judgment ; nevertheless, by 
some misunderstanding, ]\Ir. Williams followed on the same 
side, which rendered it necessary to give evidence, and the 
proceedings did not terminate till nearly six weeks after. 

Brougham was greatly oversanguine in his calculation. 

* I havo lunrd liiin sny that the Scotcli rloriry lind boon liis instnictors in 
oratory, and partirularly lliat he had learned from Dr. (Jreenfiold suddeidy to 
lower his voir(! when he wished to be distinctly heard, as thereby he orrcsteil 
uttoutiou and procured stilluoss. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 321 

There can be no doubt that a large majority of the Lords CHAP. 
were still prepared to support the bill, and that the Queen's ' 

cause gained much from subsequent discussion and from the a.d. 182o. 
still rising indignation of the people. 

The Bill of Pains and Penalties was finally ruined by a Bill ruined 
split among its supporters. The episcopal bench had almost ^^Qj^^tL 
unanimously voted for the second reading ; but one half of Bishops. 
them had strong scruples about the clause for dissolving the 
marriage, although they were willing to degrade the Queen 
from her royal state and dignity — and a considerable number 
of temporal peers took the same view of the subject — con- 
sidering marriage as a quasi sacrament, and that, at all events, 
it could not be dissolved for the adultery of the wife, the 
husband being in j^ari delicto, which, without formal evidence 
adduced by way of recrimination they thought, as con- 
scientious men, they were obliged to take notice of from the 
notoriety of the fact. The only chance of carrying the 
bill now ^^■as by omitting the divorce clause, and accord- 
ingly the Government peers voted for omitting it ; but the 
opposers of the bill voted for retaining the divorce clause, 
saying that it would be monstrous to condemn the King to 
remain for ever the husband of a wife solemnly convicted of 
adultery. The divorce clause thus remained part of the bill, 
and upon the third reading the anti-divorcians going over and 
saying not content, the majority was reduced to nine. Lord 
Liverpool thereupon declared that he could not push such a 
bill after the opinions of their Lordships upon it seemed to 
be so equally divided, and he moved, instead of " that this 
bill do pass," that the further consideration of the bill should 
bo adjourned for six months. 

This was clearly the dictate of prudence, for there was not 
the remotest possibility of being able to carry the measure 
through the Commons, and the country was ou the brink of 
rebellion. 

Brougliara, who continued to be present in the House of 
Lords during all the discussions on the Queen's case, although 
lie was no longer privileged to attend at the bar as her 
counsel, hurried off to her with the news of the victory, 
being afraid to break it to her suddenly, lest her emotions 

VOL. VIII. Y 



322 EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, should be too powerful. But wlietlier she had anticipated 
' the event, or whether she really never had believed that 



A.D. 1820. she was in serious danger, she received the announcement 
with indifference. Her gratitude to her legal advisers how- 
ever immediately burst out. She said she had 4000?. at her 
bankers, and she directed her Attorney General immediately 
to divide the whole sum between himself and her other 
counsel, over and above any fees that might be paid to them 
by the public, on whom all the expenses of the trial. King's 
and Queen's, were thrown. He respectfully declined her 
bounty, expressing the high gratification he had enjoyed in 
assisting to defeat the improper attempt that had been made 
against her, and assured her Majesty that the same senti- 
ments must be entertained by all the gentlemen with whom 
he had had the honour to be associated in the glorious task. 
He adds, as an illustration of the eccentric and incongruous 
disposition which she sometimes showed, that notwithstanding 
this trait of munificence she would never pay the salaries of 
her Attorney or Solicitor General, and at her death the 
whole of the arrears were discharged by the Treasury. 

Query In the debate which subsequently took place in the House of 

private^ ^ Commous respecting the Queen's trial Brougham made the 

opinion as to following declaration I— 

the Queen s o 

S"'^*' " If, instead of an advocate, I had been sitting as a Judge, I 

should have been found among the number of those who, laying 
their hands upon their hearts, conscientiously pronounced her 
Not Guilty. For the truth of this assertion I desire to tender 
every pledge that may he most valued and most sacred. I wish 
to make it in every form which may be deemed most solemn 
and most binding ; and if I believe it not as I now advance it, 
I here imprecate on myself every curse which is most horrid and 
most penal."* 

This, it will be observed, applies only to the vote he should 
have giveriy which might well have proceeded on " not proven,'' 
the evidence being such as could not with safety be judicially 
acted upon. But as to his private opinion on lier guilt or 
innocence ho remained silent. Although ho has talked i(S 
mo with unbounded licence on almost all other subjects, and 

* 4 Hansard, N. S., 503. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 323 

of almost all other persons, he has never volunteered to tell CHAP, 
me what he really thought of the truth of the charge against ' 

his royal client, and I could not with any decency ask him his ^.d. 1820. 
conscientious belief. Denman, who had about him more 
enthusiasm than discrimination, used to profess, and I doubt 
not sincerely, that he considered her " pure as unsunned 
snow." Brougham's conduct before the trial began can only 
be justified upon the supposition that he thought there was 
satisfactory evidence to convict her.* 

During the trial, although there was no doubt much false 
swearing against her, there were facts proved by witnesses of 
credit from which, had she been a woman of sober sense and 
ordinary regard for the opinions of others, the inference of 
guilt was almost inevitable. Her chance of a favourable 
verdict from posterity must depend upon the weight given to 
the bizarrerie (as she called it) which she affected, and to her 
culpable contempt for appearances. She sometimes talked 
and acted as if with a view to excite suspicion, when no 
actual guilt had been incurred. This might be from a love 
of mystification, without ulterior object, or it might be 
designedly to take off the effect of evidence which she might 
apprehend of her being seen in situations which prima facie 
would prove her guilt. She certainly conferred no credit on 
lier station, and her conduct can only be palliated by the 
unfortunate circumstances in which she was placed, and the 
ill-usage which she experienced from her worthless husband. 
He has been severely punished. Considering the glories of 
the Regency from Wellington's Peninsular campaigns, the 
battle of Waterloo, and the transportation of Napoleon to 
St. Helena, his name might have shone forth with the most 
distinguished of the Edwards and Henrys; but he is detested 
as the worst of the Georges — as a selHsh voluptuary, whose 

* The attempts tliat lie matle to reconcile with lior innocence the proposal 
which ho ma^lc in 1819, that in consideration of 3o,000Z. a year for life she 
would always reside abroad and never assume the title of Queen, by pointing 
f)ut tlmt she wns then only Princess of "Walen, and might never be Queen, were 
most futile; and his assertion that he made the offer entirely without her 
atithority, knowledge, or privity, is almost incredible; while, if believed, it 
convicts him of iuiexample<l temerity. See 4 Hansard, N. S., 495. His conduct 
as her adviser from the time she went abroad in 1814, till the trial began in 
1820, is the most etjui vocal part of his whole career. 

Y 2 



324 REIGN or GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, flagrant vices were unredeemed by a single public or private 



virtue. 



increase to 



at the bar. 



A.D. 1820. Brougham acquired immense gloiy and popularity from his 
Brougham's defence of the Queen. Denman was said to have stood by her 
larity from with more sincerity and disinterestedness ; but his fame 
his defence of ^^g^g famished bv his qo and sin no more peroration, and 

the Queen. jo 1 j 

Brouo:ham was celebrated as her ojreat deliverer. The 
freedoms of corporations in gold boxes poured in upon him 
from all quarters ; a splendid candelabra was presented to 
him, paid by a penny subscription of peasants and mechanics ; 
his bust was carried about for sale in the streets by Italian 
boys, along with Queen Caroline's ; and the Broughams Head 
became a common sign for beershops. 

What was of more importance, his practice at the bar 
his practice was Suddenly increased fivefold. When he next appeared on 
the Northern Circuit the attorneys crowded round him with. 
briefs, that they might be privileged to converse with Queen 
Caroline's illustrious advocate. During one whole round of 
the assizes at York, Durham, Newcastle, Carlisle, Appleby, 
and Lancaster, crowds came from distant parts to see and 
listen to him, and the Civil Court and the Crown Court were 
respectively overflowing or deserted as he appeared in the 
one or in the other. Here he did not long maintain his 
ascendancy, for Scarlett (afterwards Lord Abinger) and even 
Pollock (afterwards Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer) 
when opposed to him, by their superior knowledge of law 
and tiisi jprius tact easily got the verdict, unless from the 
overpowering strength of his case there was an impossibility 
that he should lose it ; but ever after, both on the circuit 
and in London, whenever there was a cause to be tried 
exciting great popular interest, he w^as sure to be retained in 
it. Nevertheless he did not get into regular employment in 
the ordinary routine business of the courts ; and it used still to 
be said that whereas Erskine never spoke a word except with 
a view to the verdict, Brougham, rhiefly solicitous about 
himself, having made a brilliant s])eech, was rather apathetic 
as to the event of the trial. 

His fame as an adv(K'iit«\ however, now added considerably 
to his ascendancy in tlic House of Commons. Debates arose, 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 325 

after tlie Queen's trial, about restoring her name to the CHAP, 
liturgy, and about making a provision for her support, in 



which he took a leading part and successfully assailed the a.d. i82i. 
proceedings of the government. He was often taunted about 
the mysterious part he had acted in the negotiations for the 
status of the unhappy Caroline at the close of the last reign 
and the beginning of the present ; but so bold had he become 
that he considered it enough to assert, with an air of defiance 
and of triumph, that without her authority he had made 
the offer, when she was Princess of Wales, for her to 
remain abroad for life, without assuming the title of Queen, 
in consideration of an allowance of 35,000?. a year ; that he 
had not communicated to her Lord Liverpool's proposal 
after she became Queen, to allow her 50,000Z. a year on 
the same conditions ; that his reason for this omission was 
because it was not convenient to him to go to Geneva in 
person ; that there was no medium through which the pro- 
posal could be transmitted to her before the interview at 
St. Omer ; and that he then considered himself superseded 
as a negotiator by Lord Hutchinson. In spite of the sus- 
picions secretly entertained or whispered against him, he 
was now listened to in public with attention, deference, and 
admiration, and he held a position in the House of Commons 
equal to that of any Member of it either in office or in 
opposition. 

The session of 1821 having been brought to a close, the Queen's 
agitation in favour of Queen Caroline was continued by her crowned, 
claim to be crowned along with her husband. An intimation 
being given that no preparations were to be made for her to 
take a part in the ceremony, she petitioned that she might be 
heard by her Attorney General before the Privy Council in 
support of her right, and he argued at great length that, 
although the King must give the order for the Queen's 
coronation, he was as much bound by law to do so as to issue 
a writ to an hereditary peer to sit in Parliament. He 
succeeded in showing that in a great majority of cases the 
Queens Consort of England had been crowned along with the 
King ; but, unfortunately, it turned out that in five instances 
the King had been crowned alone, with a wife living and 



326 EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, then in England. Brongliam was so hard pressed as to be 
' obliged to argue that although there was no proof that 



A.D. 1S21. Henrietta Maria was crowned along with Charles I., the 
event might have happened without being noticed by heralds 
or historians, and tliat the explanations of her absence 
given by contemporary writers — from the difficulty of con- 
ducting the ceremony, she being a Koman Catholic — were 
wholly to be disregarded. Uniform usage failing, he was 
driven to such arguments as these : — 

" Doubts may exist as to the validity of a King's marriage, 
and as celebrating the coronation of the Consort tends to make 
the testimony of it public and perpetual, so omitting it, and, 
still more, the withholding that solemnity, has a tendency to 
raise suspicions against the marriage, and to cast imputations 
upon the legitimacy of the issue, contrary to the genius and 
policy of the law. Tl\e Queen Consort's coronation is not so 
much a^'ight in herself as in the realm ; or rather it is a right 
given to her for the benefit of the realm, in like manner as the 
King's rights are conferred upon him for the common weal; and 
hence is derived an answer to the objection that the Queen has 
always enjoyed it by favour of her Consort, who directs her to 
be crowned as a matter of grace. The law and constitution of 
this coiintiy are utterly repugnant to any such doctrine as grace 
or favour from the crown regulating the enjoyment of public 
rights. The people of these realms hold their privileges and 
immunities by the same title of law whereby the King holds his 
crown, with this difference, that the crown itself is only holden 
for the better maintaining those privileges and immunities." 

The claim was unanimously rejected by the Privy Council, 
and the manner in which it was urged rather turned public 
opinion against the Queen, for although it might be very fit 
that she should be prayed for, whatever her character and 
conduct might have been, the notion of her being exiiibited 
before the people in Westminster Hall by the side of her 
husband, and that they should be jointly consecrated by the 
Ar('hl)islu)p of Canterbury with the holy oil, shocked the 
common sense and right feeling of all. 

In making the claim she acted by the indiscreet advice 

of her Attorney General ; but she injured herself still more 

19th July, by attempting, contrary to bis earnest remonstrances, to 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 327 

force her way into Westminster Abbey on tbe day of the ^?,^^- 

Coronation. She was repulsed amidst the hisses, instead ' 

of the plaudits, of the mob, and the mortification she a.d. 1821. 

suffered was supposed to have brought on the disorder which, Queen's 

very soon afterwards, suddenly put an end to her melancholy 7^'^ J^^„ 
career. — (See Appendix). 



328 



KEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAPTEK IV. 

FROM THE DEATH OF QUEEN CAROLINE TILL HE BECOMES 
LORD CHANCELLOR. — 1821-1830. 

CHAP. The death of Queen Caroline was a heavy blow to Brougham. 
He not only was lowered in political consequence by losing 
\ D. 1821. ^^ instrument of annoyance wfeich he could wield with effect, 
Brougham but it touchcd him very closely in his profession ; for, losing 
doffWs silk ^^^ office of Attorney General to the Queen, he was obliged 
gown and to to doff his silk gown and full-bottom wig, and attiring himself 
\ssuff. g^g^^j^ -j^ bombazin and a common tie, to "take his place in 
court without the bar accordingly." George IV. had the 
pusillanimity to make a personal affair between himself and 
Brougham and Denman of what had passed dui'ing the Queen's 
trial. Out of revenge for having been compared by them to 
Nero, he expressed a determined resolution that neither of 
them should be admitted into the number of his ^' counsel 
learned in the law," and that they should be depressed as long 
and as much as it was in his power to depress them. This 
resolution, to which he long adhered, till it was finally over- 
come by the manly representations of the Duke of Wellington, 
at first annoyed Brougham very much ; but the ex- Attorney 
soon found that, for a time at least, his consequence was rather 
enhanced by being considered the victim of royal animosity 
because he had courageously done his duty. 
His speech Now he conductcd to a successful termination two prosecu- 
Smv. tions connected with the late Queen, which had been com- 
menced in her lifetime. The first was a criminal information 
granted by the Court of King's Bench against the Rev. ]\Ir. 
Blacow for a libellous sermon delivered by him from the pulpit 
the Sunday after the Queen's procession to St. Paul's to return 
thanks for lier victory over all her cuemies. The defendant 
addressed his congregation in the following terms : — 

" After compassing sea and land with her guilty paramour to 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 329 

gratify to the full her impure desires, and even polluting the CHAP. 
Holy Sepulchre itself with her presence — to which she was 



carried in mock majesty astride upon an ass — she retui-ned to ^g2, 

this hallowed soil so hardened in sin, so bronzed with infamy, 
so callous to every feeling of decency or shame, as to go on 
Sunday last, clothed in the mantle of adultery, to kneel down at 
the altar of that God who is ' of purer eyes than to behold 
iniquity,' when she ought rather to have stood barefooted in the 
aisle, covered with a shirt as white as 'unsunned snow,' doing 
penance for her sins. Till this had been done, I would never 
have defiled my hands by placing the sacred symbols in hers ; and 
this she would have been compelled to do in those good old days 
when Church discipline was in pristine vigour and activity." 

The rule for the criminal information was granted in the 
Queen's lifetime on the application of her Attorney General, 
without an affidavit (as is usually required) denying the truth 
of the imputations. He says she was eager to make such an 
affidavit, but that he would not permit her to do so, because 
on searching for precedents it was found that a Queen, on 
account of her dignity and supposed impeccability, was en- 
, titled to the protection of the Court against calumny, without 
any declaration of innocence, and it was thought that to make 
an affidavit in this instance would have been to derogate from 
the Reginal prerogative : — 

" During the interval between the information being obtained 
and tried," says Lord Brougham, "an event happened which 
gave a peculiarly mournful interest to the proceeding — the death 
of this great Princess, who fell a sacrifice to the unwearied and 
unrelenting persecution of her enemies. A circumstance well 
fitted to disiirm any malignity merely human seemed only to 
inspire fresh bitterness and new fury into the breast of the 
ferocious priest." * 

The trial came on before Mr. Justice Holroyd at Lancaster, 
when the defendant, as his own counsel, reiterated and aggra- 
vated all the criminatory charges in the libel. 

The late Queen's Attorney General, now a simple outer 
harristery conducted the prosecution with great good taste. 
Having read tlie above passage from the sermon, and made a 
few simple comments upon it, he thus concluded : — 

♦ • Lord Brougbam'a S[X)eclies,' vol. i., p. 29G. 



330 



KEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAP. 
IV. 



A.D. 1821. 



The best 
speech he 
ever de- 
livered, 
against the 
clergy of 
Durham and 
Dr. Phil- 
potts. 



" Of the illustrious and ill-fated individual who was the object 
of this unprovolvf)d attack, I forbear to speak. She is now 
removed from such low strife, and there is an end, — I cannot say 
of her chequered life, for her existence was one continued scene 
of suffering, of disquiet, of torment from injustice, oppression, 
and animosity by all who either held or looked up to emolu- 
ment or aggrandisement, all who either possessed or courted 
them ; but the grave has closed over her unrelenting persecu- 
tions. Unrelenting I may well call them, for they have not 
spared her ashes. The evil passions which beset her steps in 
life, have not ceased to pursue her memory with a resentment 
more relentless, more implacable than death. But it is j^ours to 
vindicate the broken laws of your countr}^ If your verdict shall 
have no effect on the defendant — if he still go on unrepenting 
and unabashed — it will at least teach others, or it will warn them 
and deter them from violating the decency of private life, betray- 
ing sacred public duties, and nsulting the majesty of the Law." 

The defendant was found guilty and sentenced to three 
months' imprisonment.* 

Brougham's next speech was, in my opinion, by far the best 
be ever delivered either at the bar or in Parliament, and I 
would almost say that it is worthy to be bound up in a collec- 
tion of English oratory with Erskine's and Burke's. Tlie news 
of the death of Queen Caroline was received all over the king- 
dom with the usual mark of respect to the Royal Family, of 
solemnly tolling the bells of all cathedrals and churches, 
except in the city of Durham. This omission was commented 
upon with great severity in a newspaper called the * Durham 
Chronicle,' which contained the following strictures on the 
Durham clergy : — 

*' In this episcopal city, containing six churches independently 
of the cathedral, not a single bell announced the departure of 



* Brougham was extremely imlij^^nnt at the mildness of the punishment, 
but had his revongo by inserting in an introduction which he wrote to a 
printed account of the trial, tlio following extract from Dr. Kings ' History of 
the Kelx'llion of 174;"),' a favourite .Tacohitc })roduction, the following extract : 
" Blacones a[)ud Anglos sunt infamcs dclatores, gigantuni filii ; quos natuni 
malovolos spcs pnoinii iiiduxit in summuui scelus : qui quum castos et integor- 
rimos viros accusaro soloant, onniia eontiiigunt, et non modo perjuria sua 
vendunt, verum (tiam alios inipellunt ad })ejiran(hnn. Nomensumunta Blacow 
quo(him sacenlote, «ini ob nefarias suaa delationcs douatua est canouicatu 
Vindsorieusi a rcgni prtefecto." 



A.D. 182- 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 331 

the magnanimous spirit of tlie most injured of Queens — the CHAP, 
most persecuted of women. Thus the brutal enmity of those 
who embittered her mortal existence pursues her in her shroud. 
We know not whether any actual orders were issued to prevent 
this customary sign of mourning; but the omission plainly 
indicates the kind of spirit which predominates among our 
clergy. Yet these men profess to be followers of Jesus Chiist, 
to walk in his footsteps, to teach his precepts, to inculcate his 
spirit, to promote harmony, charity, and Christian love ! Out 
upon such hypocrisy ! It is such conduct which renders the 
very name of our established clergy odious till it stinks in the 
nostrils." 

The Court of King's Bench having granted a rule to show 
cause why a criminal information should not be filed against 
Mr. Williams, the proprietor of the newspaper, for a libel 
upon the clergy of Durham, Mr. Brougham in vain tried to 
show that the rule should be discharged, on the ground that 
the alleged libel was a fair comment upon the conduct of 
public functionaries, and that the Durham clergy themselves 
had been in the habit of using much stronger language even 
as applied to one another. As an example he read an extract 
from the writings of Bishop Barnes, who«says of Durham, in 
the reign of Elizabeth, that " it is Augese Stabulum ;" and of 
the Durham clergy, that " they do stink in the nose of God 
and his people." He further observed that the same freedom 
of tone was preserved by the Durham clergy of the present 
day, " for Mr. Philpotts,* one of the number, publishes a 
pamphlet in which he describes Mr. Williams, the defendant, 
of whom he and his brethren now complain, as ' a miserable 
mercenary,' who eats the bread of prostitution and panders to 
the low appetites of those who cannot, or who dare not, cater 
for their own malignity.' " The rule was nevertheless made 
absolute, and the trial came on at the Durham Summer 
Assizes, 1822. 

Coltman, an intimate friend of mine (afterwards a Judge of 
the Common Pleas), then a barrister on the Northern circuit, 
told me that the niglit before the trial he saw Brougham in a 
sequestered spot by the river side pacing backwards and for- 

* Afterwards Bishop of Exeter. 



332 KEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

^^^^- wards with folded arms, and that as lie approached, Brougham 
' suddenly turned round, held up both hands, and exclaimed 
A.D. 1822. in a hollow voice, " Avaunt! depart! I am distilling venom 
for the Durham clergy I " 

I can only give two specimens of what he poured out next 
day. Thus he commented upon the English hierarchy and 
that portion of it who were the prosecutors on this occasion — 
alluding to the visit which George IV. was then making to 
his Presbyterian kingdom of Scotland : — 

" If any hierarchy in all the world is bound on every principle 
of consistency — if any Church should be forward not only to 
suffer but provoke discussion, to stand upon that title and chal- 
lenge the most unreserved inquiry — it is the Protestant Clmrch 
of England ; first, because she has nothing to dread from it ; 
secondly, because she is the very creature of free inquiry — the 
offspring of repeated revolutions — and the most reformed of 
the reformed Churches of Europe. But surely if there is any 
one corner of Protestant Europe where men ought not to be 
rigorously judged in ecclesiastical controversy — where a large 
allowance should be made for the conflict of irreconcilable 
opinions — where the harshness of jarring tenets should be 
patiently borne, and strong, or even violent language, be not too 
narrowly watched — it is this very realm, in which we live under 
three different ecclesiastical orders, and owe allegiance to a 
sovereign, who, in one of his kingdoms, is the head of the 
Church, acknowledged as such by all men ; while, in another, 
neither he nor any earthly being is allowed to assume that name 
— a realm composed of three great divisions, in one of which 
Prelacy is favoured by law and approved in practice by an Epis- 
copalian people ; while, in another, it is protected indeed by 
law, but abjured in practice by a nation of sectaries, Catholic 
and Presbyterian ; and, in a third, it is abhorred alike by law 
and in practice, repudiated by the whole institutions of the 
country, scorned and detested by the whole of its inhabitants. 
His Majesty, almost at the time in which I am speaking, is 
about to make a progress through the northern provinces of this 
island, accompanied by certain of liis chosen counsellors, a 
portion of men who enjoy unenvied, and in an equal degree, the 
admiration of other countries, and the wonder of their own — 
and there the Prince will see much loyalty, great learning, some 
splendour, the remains of an ancient monarchy, and of the insti- 
tutions which made it flourish. But one thiuir he will not see. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 333 

Strange as it may seem, and to many wlio hear me incredible, CHAP, 
from one end of the country to tlie other he ^11 see no such 
thing as a Bishop ; not such a thing is to be found from the ^ ^ ^g.^,, 
Tweed to John o' Groat's ; not a mitre ; no, nor so much as a 
minor canon, or even a rural dean ; and in all the land not one 
single curate, so entirely rude and barbarous are they in Scot- 
land ; in such outer darkness do they sit, that they support no 
cathedrals, maintain no pluralists, suffer no non-residence ; nay, 
the poor benighted creatures are ignorant even of tithes. Not 
a sheaf, or a lamb, or a pig, or the value of a plough-penny do 
the hapless mortals render from year's end to year's end ! 
Piteous as their lot is, what makes it infinitely more touching, 
is to witness the return of good for evil in the demeanour of this 
wretched race. Under all this cruel neglect of their spiritual 
concerns, they are actually the most loyal, contented, moral, and 
religious people anywhere, perhaps, to be found in the world. 
Let us hope (many, indeed, there are, not afar off, who will with 
unfeigned devotion pray) that his Majesty may return safe from 
the dangers of his excursion into such a country — an excursion 
most perilous to a certain portion of the Church, should his 
royal mind be infected with a taste for cheap establishments, 
a working clergy, and a pious congregation ! But compassion 
for our brethren in the north has drawn me aside from my 
purpose, which was merely to remind you how preposterous 
it is in a country of which the ecclesiastical polity is framed 
upon plans so discordant, and the religious tenets themselves are 
so various, to require any very measured expressions of men's 
opinions upon questions of Church government. And if there 
is any part of England in which an ample licence ought more 
especially to be admitted in handling such matters, I say without 
hesitation it is this very Bishopric, where in the 19th century, 
you live under a Palatine Prince, the Lord of Durham ; where 
the endowment of the hierarchy — I may not call it enormous, but 
I trust I shall be permitted without offence to term it splendid; 
where the establishment I dare not whisper proves grinding 
to the people, but I will rather say is an incalculable, an in- 
scrutable blessing — only it is prodigiously large; showered 
down in a profusion somewhat overpowering ; and laying the 
inhabitants under a load of obligation overwhelming by its 
weight. It is in Durham where the Church is endowed with a 
splendour and a power unknown in monkish times and popish 
countries, and the clergy swarm in every comer, an' it were 
the patrimony of St. Peter — it is here where all manner of con- 



A.D. 182: 



334 KEIGN OF GEOKGE IV. 

CHAP, flicts are at each moment inevitable between the people and the 
priests, that I feel myself warranted on their behalf, and for tJieir 
protection — for the sake of the Establishment, and as the dis- 
creet advocate of that Church and that clergy — for the defence 
of their very existence, — to demand the most unrestrained dis- 
cussion for their title and their actings under it. For them, in 
this age, to screen their conduct from investigation, is to stand 
self-convicted ; to shrink from the discussion of their title, is 
to confess a flaw ; he must be the most shallow, the most blind 
of mortals, who does not at once perceive that if that title is 
protected only by the strong arm of the law, it becomes not 
worth the parchment on which it is engrossed, or the wax that 
dangles to it for a seal. I have hitherto all along assumed, 
that there is nothing impure in the practice under the system ; 
I am admitting that every person engaged in its administration 
does every one act which he ought, and which the law expects 
him to do ; I am supposing that up to this hour not one un- 
worthy member has entered within its pale; I am even pre- 
suming that up to this moment not one of those individuals has 
stept beyond the strict line of his sacred functions, or given the 
slightest offence or annoyance to any human being. I am taking 
it for granted that they all act the part of good shepherds, 
making the welfare of their flock their first care, and onl}^ occa- 
sionally bethinking them of shearing, in order to prevent the 
too luxuriant growth of the fleece proving an encumbrance, or 
to eradicate disease. If, however, those operations be so con- 
stant that the flock actually live under the knife ; if the shep- 
herds are so numerous, and employ so large a troop of the 
watchful and eager animals that attend them (some of them too 
with a cross of the fox, or even the wolf, in their breed), can it 
be wondered at, if the poor creatures thus fleeced, and hunted, 
and barked at, and snapped at, and from time to time worried, 
should now and then bleat, dream of preferring the rot to the 
shears, and draw invidious, possibly disadvantageous comparisons 
between the wolf without, and the shei:)lierd within the fold? 
It cannot be helped; it is in the nature* of things that suffering 
should beget complaint ; but for those who have caused the pain 
to complain of the outcry and seek to punish it — for those who 
have goaded to scourge and to gag, is the meanest of all in- 
justice. It is moreover the most pitiful folly for tlie clergy to 
tliink of retaining their power, privileges, and enormous wealth, 
without allowing free vent for complaints against abuses in 
the Establishment and delinquency in its members; and in 



LIFE OF LOKD BROUGHAM. 335 

this prosecution they have displaj^ed that folly in its supreme CHAP, 
degree." ^^• 



He then went over the parts of the alleged libel most com- a.d. 1822. 
plained of, insisting that its language was mild compared with 
that of Milton and other writers eminent for their piety as 
well as genius, and contended that the heartless and disloyal 
conduct of the prosecutors in insulting the memory of the 
Queen would have justified strictures much more severe. 
Thus he concluded by drawing the eyes of all upon Dr. 
Philpotts, the supposed instigator of the prosecution, who was 
sitting on the bench near the Judge : — 

" My learned friend, Mr. Scarlett, has sympathised with the 
priesthood, and innocently enough lamented that they possess 
not the power of defending themselves through the public press. 
Let him be consoled — they are not so entirely destitute of the 
aid of the press as through him they have represented them- 
selves to be. They have largely used that press (I wish I could 
say ^ as not abusing it'), and against some persons very near me; 
I mean especially against my client, the defendant, whom they 
prosecute, having scurrilousl}^ and foully libelled him through 
that great vehicle of public instruction, over which, for the 
first time, among the other novelties of the day, I now hear they 
have no control. Not that they wound deeply or injure much ; 
but that is no fault of theirs — without hurting, they give trouble 
and discomfort. The insect brought into life by corruption, and 
nestled in filth, though its flight be lowly and its sting puny, 
can swarm and buzz, and irritate the skin and offend the nostril, 
and altogether give nearly as much annoyance as the wasp, 
whose nobler nature it aspires to emulate. These reverend 
slanderers — these pious backbiters — devoid of force to waeld the 
sword, snatch the dagger, and, destitute of wit to point or to barb 
it and make it rankle in the wound, steep it in venom to make 
it fester in the scratch. The much venerated personages whose 
harmless and unprotected state is now deplored, have been the 
wholesale dealers in calumny, as well as largest consumers of 
the base article — the especial promoters of that vile traffic, 
of late the disgrace of the country — both fuinij>hing a constant 
demand for the slanders by which the press is polluted, and 
prostituting themselves to pander for the appetites of others: 
and now they come to demand protection fiom retaliation, and 
shelter fiom just exposure; and to screen themselves, would have 
you prohibit all scrutiny of the abuses by which they exist, and 



336 ' EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, the mal-practices by wliicli they disgrace their calling. After 
abusing and well-nigh dismantling, for their own despicable 
A D 1822 P^^poses, the great engine of instruction, they would have you 
annihilate all that they have left of it, to secure their escape. 
They have the incredible assurance to expect that an English 
jury will conspire with them in this wicked design. They 
expect in vain ! If all existing institutions and all public 
functionaries must henceforth be sacred from question among the 
people ; if, at length, the free press of this country, and with 
it the freedom itself, is to be destroyed — at least let not the 
heavy blow fall from your hands. Leave it to some profligate 
tyrant; leave it to a mercenary and effeminate Parliament — a 
hireling army, degraded by the lash, and the readier instrument 
for enslaving its country; leave it to a pampered House of 
Lords — a venal House of Commons — some vulgar minion, servant- 
of-all-work to an insolent Court — some -unprincipled soldier, 
unknown, thank God ! in our times, combining the talents of a 
usurper with the fame of a captain; leave to such desperate 
hands, and such fit tools, so horrid a work ! But jou, an En glitch 
jury, parent of the press, yet supported by it, and doomed to 
perish the instant its health and strength are gone — lift not 
you against it an unnatural hand. Prove to ns tliat our rights 
are safe in your keeping; but maintain, above all things, the 
stability of our institutions by well- guarding their corner-stone. 
Defend the Church from her worst enemies, who, to hide their 
own misdeeds, would veil her solid foundations in darkness ; 
and proclaim to them by your verdict of acquittal, that hence- 
forward, as heretofore, all the recesses of the sanctuar}'- must be 
visited by the continual light of day, and by tliat light all its 
abuses be explored ! " 

The jury found a verdict of " Guilty of publishing a libel 
against the clergy residing in and near the city of Durham 
and the suburbs thereof." Next term a rule was granted to 
show cause why judgment should not be arrested, on the 
ground tliat this finding did not agree with the information, 
and that the offence found was too vague to justify any prose- 
cution. Cause was not shown, and the prosecution was allowed 
to drop. 

In truth, it ought never to luive been instituted, and tlie 
Judges were justly punished for having improperly granted 
the information by the difficulties in which they were involved, 
and the ridicule which thev incurnnl. One of tlicm, Mr. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 337 

Justice Best, showed such zeal and ignorance in trying to CHAP, 
answer the objection that no one could tell what class of ' 



clergymen was meant by *' the clergy residing in and near a.d. 1822. 
Durham," that he asked, " Are Dissenters ever called clergy ? " 
— when he was truly told that not only are Roman Catliolic 
priests allowed to be "clergy" by the Church of England 
herself, but that Presbyterian ministers are denominated 
" clergy " in many Acts of Parliament. 

This prosecution closed the public proceedings respecting 
the character and conduct of Caroline of Brunswick, in which 
Brougham had made a very conspicuous figure. 

During the five following years and until the formation of Rapid re- 
Mr. Canning's administration nothing occurred materially to fiv7veais^ 
alter his position either professionally or politically. The which inter- 
King's resentment against him not having cooled, he continued tween the 
to wear a stuff gown. His practice at the bar rather declined ; jg'^^th^ud 
nevertheless, from the notoriety of the cases in which he was the ibrma- 
retained he was a good deal before the public as an advocate, ^j^^g's Go-"" 
and the splendour of his career in the House of Commons was vernmeut. 
of steady use to him professionally by inspiring clients with 
the natural desire of having for their counsel a gentleman so 
much talked of, and so much praised as well as abused in the 
newspapers. I do not find any other case of permanent 
celebrity which he patronised while he continued at the bar; 
and as a mere barrister-at-law he would soon have been for- 
gotten, being much inferior to FoUett and others, of whom the 
next generation will know nothing. 

In the House of Commons he maintained and extended his 
reputation. His great subjects were Slavery, Education, 
Public Charities, and Law Reform. The slave-trade had 
been abolished before he entered Parliament ; but he gave new 
efficiency to that measure by passing an Act by which it was 
made felony for any British subject to be engaged in the 
slave-trade in any part of the world. 

In Education he had great designs, for he vowed the re- 
formation of our Universities and public schools, and the intro- 
duction of a new system of instruction for the whole mass of 
the lower orders. At first he caused much consternation by 
summoning some of the Dons from Oxford and the Musters 

VOL. VJII. z 



338 REIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 

CHAP, from Eton, and catechising them about their antiquated pro- 
' cesses. Wearing his hat as Chairman, they complained (I 
A.D. 1822. make no doubt without cause) of his treating them rudely, 
and they said the Committee-room resembled the Court— 

" Where England's Monarch once uncovered sat, 
"While Bradshaw bullied in a broad-brimmed hat." 

But these inquiries produced no practical effect, as the Uni- 
versities and public schools could not be touched without 
sacrilege, and the divisions between Churchmen and Dissenters 
effectually prevented the establishment of any general system 
of education. But Brougham had the reputation of being the 
founder of London University College, open to all religions, 
although Thomas Campbell, author of the ' Pleasures of Hope,' 
complained to me (and I believe justly) that the ostensible 
Founder had stolen the plan from him, — the poet concluding 
his narrative by exclaiming, *' G-reatest, brightest, meanest of 
mankind!" 

His efforts to remedy the abuses in public charities cost 
the nation several hundred thousand pounds distributed 
among various sets of Commissioners, but as yet no real 
benefit has been derived from their labours. 

In Law Reform he was more successful ; and I shall here- 
after have much to say of his services in this department. 
iith Feb. The first great speech which he made in Parliament, after 

^^^^' the Carolinian agitation had subsided, was on "Agricultural 

Distress," and here he again showed a sad ignorance or for- 
Biougham's getfulucss of the first principles of political economy ; he 
lection and" earnestly advocated the protection of native industry against 
lionor (.f fi-ee trade in corn : — 

tree- trade. 

" It is well," said he, " to talk iu honeyed accents of suiting 
the supply to the demand, and throwing bad land out of cultiva- 
tion. These words, however smoothly they may sound upon the 
tongue, will be found, if interpreted, full of serious and dan- 
gerous meaning. They suppose the laying waste of a fair propor- 
tion of England, the breaking up of all endearing connexions, the 
destruction uf all local attachments, the most frightful agonies to 
which the hiimati mind can he .subjected. To this conclusion tlie 
. thing must, after all, come, l^ersons tallc of the ruin of the landed 
interest ; but it is not meant to say that the land will become 
bterilo, or that the houses will be levelled and the owners exter- 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 339 

minated. No ; what is understood by tiie ruin of a great class, CHAP, 
and by the destruction of one of the most commanding interests ' 

in the country, is shortly this : — a great change of property, much ^ .g.^g 
individual misery. Such is what is called the destruction of a 
class, and when it happens to a community it becomes the de- 
struction of the State." 

He has lived to see free trade in corn not only giving 
a new impetus to manufactures, but greatly improving agri- 
culture, raising the rent of the landlord, improving the 
coedition of the tenant farmer, adding immensely to the com- 
forts of the labourer, making employment and contentment 
universal, and rendering the British Empire more powerful 
than at any former period of our history. But no one can be 
much blamed for being deluded by erroneous dogmas in 
which he has been educated, and which continue to be con- 
sidered axioms by the great bulk of his contemporaries. 
English legislation had proceeded for five centuries upon the 
principle that the free importation of foreign corn would be 
ruinous to the State, and this was still undoubtingly believed 
by statesmen and politicians of all parties and classes, with 
the exception of a few individuals whose hallucinations were 
considered rather fitter for being cured by medicine than re- 
futed by philosophy. So late as the year of grace 1838, 
Lord Melbourne, at the head of a Whig Government, said, 
in his place in Parliament, that ** the Minister who should 
propose the abolition of the corn laws would only be fit for a 
lunatic asylum." And Lord John Eussell, in 1841, by pro- 
posing that the importation of foreign corn should be permitted 
on payment of a fixed duty, lost the support of a large portion 
of the Whigs, and paved the way for the return to power of 
Sir Robert Peel, then believed to be the devoted friend of 
Protection. 

The leading subject of debate in the following Session of a.d. 1823, 
Parliament was the relief of the Irish Eoman Catholics, ^/otion in 

the House of 

Canning, when about to proceed to India as Governor-General, Commons 

had been appointed Secretary of State and leader of the {JI!o^j,cTham 

House of Commons on the sudden death of Lord Castloreagh — and Canning 

the condition of his appointment (as was generally supposed) taken into 

being, that, although he was still to be at liberty to profess him- custody. 

z 2 



340 EETGN OF GEORGE IV. 

^^^^- self in favour of Catholic emancipation, he was not seriously 

to press this measure upon the legislature. Brougham, during 

A.D. 1823. a debate upon a motion for taking the Roman Catholic claims 
into consideration, animadverted with great severity upon a 
speech made by Canning, who had hitherto been hot and 
impatient in the cause, but now, though pretending to befriend 
it, recommended delay, and was cooled down almost to the 
freezing point : — 

" When," asked Brougham, " did this change come upon him ? 
Was it when the question arose whether he should go to In^ia 
into honourable exile, or take office in England, and not submit 
to his sentence of transportation, but be condemned to hard 
labour in his own country — doomed to the disquiet of a divided 
council — sitting with his enemies and pitied by his friends — 
what he most desired having become ihe forbidden fruit which he 
must not touch without being ejected from Paradise ! His fate 
then depended upon his sentiments, or rather the part he was to 
take respecting Emancipation. He has said to-night that he 
would not truckle to a noble lord,* who in truth required no 
such sacrifice; but on the occasion I refer to, when truckling 
was necessary, he exhibited a specimen — the most incredible spe- 
cimen — of monstrous truckling for the purpose of obtaining office 
that the whole history of political tergiversation could furnish — " 

Mr. Secretary Canning : " I rise to say that that is false." 

The Speaker interposed, but the right hon. gentleman 
declared that although he was sorry to have used any 
word which was a violation of the decorum of the House, 
nothing — no consideration on earth — should induce him to 
retract the sentiment. Mr. Tierney and several other members 
attempted in vain to bring about an explanation, and at last 
a motion was made, "That the Right Honourable George 
Canning, and Henry Brougham, Esq., be committed to the 
custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms." 

After a good deal of discussion, in which it was suggested 
that Mr. Canning had misunderstood Mr. Brougham's mean- 
ing in supjiosing that any personal dishonour was imputed to 
him, and that there ouglit to be a conditional retractation of 
the offensive language, Mr. Brougham, who long remained 
obstinately silent, at last said : — 

* Lord Folkestone, afterwards Earl of Radnor. 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 341 

" If I were to consult my own feelings alone T should wish to CHAP. 



finish the sentence in which I was interrupted, and the right 
honourable gentleman would see whether, in his own opinion, that 
interruption could be justified. But the question is whether the 
right honourable gentleman who has used the disorderly expres- 
sion and myself shall be taken into custody. That he has been 
guilty of a breach of the rules of the House has been declared by 
the highest authority, and no dissent on this point has been ex- 
pressed. The question is whether not only the right honourable 
gentleman who has been unanimously pronounced guilty shall 
be taken into custody, but also myself, against whom no charge 
has been made. I know that the power of the House in this 
respect is absolute ; but if such an order is made, it will be a 
flagrant violation of the principles of justice. I beg the House 
to understand that I oppose the first pai-t of the motion no less 
than the last. I would by no means hold up my hand for passing 
a censure upon the right honourable gentleman, or for committing 
him to custody for the expression he used on hearing one haK of 
the sentence which I was about to deliver. I feel it extremely 
difficult to speak with the accuracy which has now become neces- 
fcary of the language I used. I will, however, tell the Plouse 
what I meant to say, the facts on which I reasoned, and the 
inference which I have drawn from these facts. I believed them 
to be true; but if not, and the conclusion I have drawn be 
erroneous, I shall rejoice. I used the words ' ])olitical tergiversa- 
tion.' I described the conduct of the right honourable gentleman 
as something which stood prominent in the history of parliamen- 
tary tergiversation. The expression, I admit, was strong, but I 
thought it an expression which I had heard used over and over 
again without giving offence. I am sure I have never heard of 
any occasion on which it was more accurately applied. I enter- 
tained a strong feeling, and I meant to express it, with respect to 
the right honourable member's public and political life. As a 
private individual 1 never knew aught of him but what did him 
the highest honour. But having had the high honour of being 
connected with him heretofore in advocating the Catholic cause, 
I understood that in a speech delivered by him at Liverpool he 
had said, for the first time in the history of the Catholic question, 
that ' he did not ivish that question to he discussed again in Parlia- 
ment.' If the right honourable gentleman did not say so, 1 heartily 
beg his pardon. But I read it in what professed to be a cor- 
rected copy of his speech. At that moment it was known tliat 
the right honourable gentleman was about to become a Minister 
at home, or to go out as Governor-General of India. And it was 



IV 



A.D. 1823. 



342 REIGN OF GEORGE lY. 

CHAP, a matter of perfect notoriety that the all-powerful Lord Chancellor 
was in direct hostility not only to the Catholic question, but to 



A.D. 182; 



the right honourable gentleman as its most powerful supporter. 
When, therefore, I connected that Liverpool declaration with that 
hostility, and the subsequent appointment of the right honourable 
gentleman to the office he now holds, I could not repel the con- 
clusion I stated in the objectionable expression. It was under 
that imi:)ression, and with the view of transferring it to the 
House, that I spoke. If the expression was too strong for the 
orders of the House, I most readily apologise, although it be not 
too strong for my feelings. I conceived that I had a right to 
form an opinion of the right honourable gentleman's motives from 
the outward and visible sign of his actions. All these things 
seemed to me to show a truckling to the Lord Chancellor. His 
appointment as Minister and Manager of the House of Commons 
(as it is unconstitutionally called) confirmed the opinion I had 
formed. I am aware that it is wrong to impute motives to the 
conduct of any one, and I gather from the right honourable gen- 
tleman that I have been mistaken in doing so in this instance. 
But I had a right to speak of his conduct as a statesman, which 
I deplored ; and this is all that I have done. I am actuated by 
no party, still less by any personal, considerations. I lamented 
only a death blow to that cause in which we had both been 
ardently engaged." 

Peel, then the great anti-Catholic leader, not sorry to see 
his rival damaged, suggested that the explanation should be 
considered satisfactory, and, with affected magnanimity, de- 
clared tliat the facts must have been grossly misrepresented 
to the honourable and learned gentleman, for that nothing 
could by possibility be more free from trucMing than the 
manner in which his right honourable friend had accepted 
office. The motion for committing the two members was 
then withdrawn, and Canning declared that " he should think 
no more of it." 

This scene laid the foundation for one of Charles Dickens's 
most amusing chapters in * Pickwick,' where a similar quarrel 
was adjusted among tlie Ticlcwicldans by a declaration that 
certain oircnsivc expressions luid not been used in their usuixl 
and natural, hni in their Piclcwichian sense. 
Abolition of Then, and for about ten years longer, such scenes were not 
(lueliing. J..^.^ jj^ ^]j(3 ll(jusc of Cojuuious, tliis being the transition state 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. o4d 

between the period when political duels were frequent and CHAP, 
creditable, and the fashion of the present day, when, political ' 

duels bringing odium or ridicule upon the combatants, they a.d. i823. 
may be considered extinct. I remember the time when 
almost all the parliamentary leaders on both sides had " been 
out" — Fox, Pitt, Tierney, Castlereagh, Canning, O'Connell, 
and, last of all, Wellington himself — but I cannot call to 
mind a single surviving leader who has ever actually ex- 
changed balls as well as words wdth a rival. We could hardly 
conceive such a thing now^ as an encounter on Wimbledon 
Common between the solemn Aberdeen and the sprightly 
Derby, or between Lord John Eussell, the impersonation 
of Whiggery, and Mr. Cobden, the apostle of Free Trade. 
Indeed one of the most prominent leaders in the House of 
Commons is a Quaker — and the scene would be too amusing 
if he should be taken into the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms 
to prevent bloodshed ! This change is certainly to be ap- 
plauded, as it not only puts an end to deadly strife but to 
ostentatious displays of mock valour. We used to be told 
that without duelling there would be intolerable scurrility 
in debate, but no such consequence has followed its abolition. 
Looking at home, and casting a glance across the Atlantic, 
we may see that decorum in deliberative assemblies is more 
effectually preserved by good taste and enlightened public 
opinion, than by the use of rifles, revolvers, or bowie knives. 

In the following Session of Parliament the House of 
Commons showed a new expedient for preventing members 
from fighting duels, by treating every outrage which might 
provoke a challenge as proof of insanity. A gentleman of 
the name of Gourlay, whom I well knew, having been at 
College with him, was very much offended by some observa- 
tions which Mr. Brougham had made upon him in presenting 
a petition, and, an apology being refused, assaulted liim with a 
horse-whip in the lobby of the House. The offender was June, i824. 
immediately taken into custody by the Serjeant-at-Arms, and 
some members declaring that although he was very clever 
and had written an excellent book, he was very eccentric, 
and had been supposed to be out of his mind, lie was ordered 
to be kept in prison till the end of the Session as a lunatic. 



344 



REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAP. 
IV. 

A.D. 1824. 



Brougham's 
speech on 
the case of 
Smith the 
i^Iissionary, 
by himself 
coiisidpied 
his best. 



The matter was thus adjusted to the entire satisfaction of all 
parties. Mr. Brougham's honour was untarnished, and Mr. 
Gourlay, when discharged, conducted himself ever after peace- 
ably and properly. 

In the course of this Session, Brougham delivered a speech 
which he frankly declared he considered his chef d'oeuvre. In 
the introduction to it, as it appeared in his printed Speeches, 
published by him in 1838, he ascribes to it mainly the aboli- 
tion of slavery in the English Colonies : — 

" All men now saw that the w^arning given in the peroration, 
though sounded in vain across the Atlantic Ocean, was echoing 
with a loudness redoubled at each repetition through the British 
Isles ; that it had rung the knell of the system ; and that at the 
fetters of the slave a blow was at length struck which must, if 
followed up, make them fall off his limbs for ever." 

Smith, a missionary minister in Demerara, had exerted 
himself very zealously in the conversion of the negroes to 
Christianity — teaching them to read and to pray, and in- 
culcating upon them the sacredness of marriage and the 
duties of wedded life. For such enormities he was brought 
to trial before a court-martial on pretence that he had 
encouraged a revolt, and he was sentenced to be shot. 
Brougham's treatment of the subject might be good for a 
mixed popular assembly, but the speech, though much ap- 
plauded at the time, now that all accidental interest is gone, 
can hardly be read through by the most indulgent of critics. 
There is no simplicity or pathos in any of its passages that 
are intended to be touching, and the air of exaggeration 
which pervades his vehemence sadly detracts from its eftect- 
But I must introduce the peroration which uttered forth the 
prophetic Avarning, which rung 'the knell of slavery, and 
which struck oft' the fetters of the negro : — 

" This lesson must now be taught by the voice of Parliament 
— that the mother country will at length make her authority 
respected ; that the rights of property are sacred, but the rules 
of justice paramount and inviolable ; that the claims of the slave 
owner are aduiitted, but the dominion of rarliamont indispntable ; 
tliat wo arc Kovcieigu alike over the NN'hito and the ])lack; and 
tli(»UL;li we may for a season, and out of ivgard for the interests of 
botli, Huircr men to hold property in their fellow-creatures, wo 



A.D. 1S24. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 315 

never, for even an instant of time, forget that they are men, and CHAP, 
the fellow-subjects of their masters ; that, if those masters shall 
still hold the same perverse course, if, taught by no experience, 
warned by no auguries, scared by no menaces from Parliament, 
or from the Crown administering those powers which Parliament 
invoked it to put forth, but, blind alike to the duties, the in- 
terests, and the perils of their situation, they rush headlong 
through infamy to destruction ; breaking promise after promise 
made to delude us; leaving pledge after pledge unredeemed, 
extorted by the pressure of the passing occasion ; or only, by 
laws passed to be a dead letter for ever, giving such an illusory 
performance as adds mockery to breach of faith; — yet a little 
delay ; yet a little longer of this unbearable trifling with the 
commands of the parent State, and she will stretch out her arm, 
in merc3% not in anger, to those deluded men themselves ; exert 
at last her undeniable authority ; vindicate the just rights, and 
restore the tarnished honour of the English name." 

The Session of 1825 was chiefly distinguished by attacks ^■^' ^825. 
on Lord Eldon and the delays of Chancery. Eldon was i^/o^s^'-^^'s 

•^ •' attacks on 

considered the key-stone of the great Tory arch ; and, if this Lord Eldon. 
could be dislodged, an expectation arose that the whole fabric 
would tumble down in ruins. Not only when motions directly 
aimed at him were debated, but whatever the professed 
subject of discussion might be, Brougham neglected no oppor- 
tunity of assailing liim. For example, in treating Catholic 
emancipation, he represented the Lord Chancellor as the 
only real obstacle to the measure, and thus exhorted the pro- 
Catholic members of the Cabinet fearlessly to proceed iu spite 
of him ; — 

" Of what are they afraid ? What is their ground of alaim ? 
Do thc}^ tliink he would resign his office? that he would quit the 
rireat Seal? I'rince llohenloe, the modern miracle- worker, is 
nothing to the man who could work such a miracle. (Cheers 
and laughter.) A more chimerical apprelicnsion never entered 
the brain of a distempered poet — anything but that. 'Many 
things may surprise me ; but nothing would so much surprise me 
as that the noble and learned individual to whom 1 allude should 
quit his hold of office while life remains. A more supcrlhious 
fear than such an event never crossed the wildest visionary in liis 
dreams. Indeed, Sir, I cannot refrain from saying that 1 think 
the right honourable gentlemen opposite greatly underrate the 



A.v. 1825. 



346 EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, steadiness of mind of the noble and learned individual in ques- 
tion. I think the}^ greatly underrate the firmness and courage 
with which he bears, and will continue to bear, the burthens of 
his high and important station. In these qualities the noble and 
learned lord has never been excelled — has never, perhaps, been 
paralleled ; nothing can equal the forbearance which he has 
manifested. Nothing can equal the constancy with which he 
has borne the thwarts that he has lately received on the questions 
of trade. His patience under such painful circumstances can be 
rivalled onlj^ by the fortitude with which he bears the prolonged 
distress of the suitors in his own court ; but to apprehend that 
any defeat would induce him to quit office is one of the vainest 
fears — one of the most fantastic apprehensions — that was ever 
entertained by man. Let him be tried. In his generous mind, 
expanded as it has been by his long official character, there is no 
propensity so strong as a love of the service of his country. He 
is, no doubt, convinced that the higher an office, the more unjus- 
tifiable it is to abandon it. The more splendid the emoluments 
of a situation — the more extensive its patronage — the more he is 
persuaded that it is not allowed to a wise and good man to tear 
himself from it. His present station the noble and learned lord 
holds as an estate for life. That is universall}^ admitted. The 
only question is, whether he is to appoint his successor. By 
some it is supposed that he has actually appointed him. If it be 
so, I warn that successor that he will be exceedingl}^ disap- 
pointed if he expects to step into the office a single moment 
before the decease of its present holder. However, I do entreat 
that the perseverance of this eminent person may be put to the 
test. Let the right honourable gentleman say he will resign, if 
the Catholic question be not carried in the Cabinet : let the noble 
and learned lord say that he will resign if it be carried. I am 
quite sure of the result. The Catholic question would be carried, 
but the noble and learned lord would retain his place. He would 
behave with the fortitude which has distinguished him in the 
other instances in which he has been defeated ; and the country 
would not be deprived, fur a single hour, of the inestimable 
benefit of his services." 

Next Tnorning, after reading the report of this debate in 
the newspapers, Lord Eldon, in a letter to his daughter, thus 
commented n|)()n it : — 

" You will see that Brougham has had no mercy upon the 
Chancellor. Laughs and cheers he produced from the comjtany 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 347 

repeatedly with Hs jokes, whicli, however, he meant to play off CHAP, 
in bitter malignity ; and yet I conld not help laughing at some 
of the jokes pretty heartilj^ myself. Xo yonng lady was ever so ^ ^ ^g.^. 
unforgiving for being refused a silk gown, when silk gowns 
adorned female forms, as Brougham is with me, because, having 
insulted my master, the insulted don't like to clothe him with 
distinction, and honour, and silk. In the straightforward dis- 
charge of my public duty 1 shall defy all my opponents ; their 
wit, theii' sarcasms, their calumnies, I regard not, whilst conscious 
I have a great duty to perform, and tliat I have now in the sup- 
port of the constitution in Church and State. I shall do what I 
think right — a maxim I have endeavoured in past life to make 
the rule of my conduct — and trust the consequences to God." 

Notwithstanding such language, the consummate hypocrite, 
who tried at times to deceive his own daughter and himself, 
was in the habit of sendino' messajres to Brousfham, lamenting; 
that no impression could be made upon the King's prejudices ; 
otherwise that tlie professional rank to which he was justly 
entitled would immediately be conferred upon him. 

Brougham was more exas]3erated by the wrong done to Brongham 
himself from observing a job of the Chancellor's, by which — ^,'|JJ^'^ ^'^^" 
that there might be some one in the House of Lords who Lord Gif 
would do the Chancellor's duty in disposing of appeals, the 
arrears of which had become quite overwhelming, and at 
the same time who would not in any degree rival him in 
reputation or in influence — Gifford had been put over the 
heads of hundreds at the bar, his superiors in learning and 
talent as well as in standing. Here is a rapid sketch by 
Brougham of his career : — 

" Lord Gifford, who has just been elevated to the peerage, owes 
his advancement to the favour of the Lord Chancellor. I never 
saw any man raised to eminence in a manner so extraordinary. 
He is seen piactising at the Exeter Sessions, and three weeks 
after he is Solicitor General. The man so raised certainly ow^es 
a great deal to the architect of his fortunes, being in no respect 
that architect himself. He has been raised to his present emi- 
nence upon the credit of possessing abilities which ho never 
exhibited— he has got everything up(m tick. 1 have not spoken 
to an individual in the profession who does not consider the 
noble lord's rise the most extraoidinary flight upwards of any- 
thing, except a balloon, that has ever been witnets&ed. After the 



June 7tU 
1825. 



348 



EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAP. 
IV. 



A.D. 1825. 



Chacge 
caused by 
the suddea 
death of 
Lord Liver- 
pool. 

A.D. 1827. 



noble lord had been raised to the highest point, not of royal, but 
of chancellarian favour — after having sat for a short time in the 
Common Pleas (and I believe he is the youngest judge who ever 
sat on that bench) — he is, by a sort of legerdemain known only to 
the Lord Chancellor, advanced to the office of Master of the 
Rolls, the most lucrative and the easiest of the law appointments. 
Then, as if to make assurance doubly sure, and that no latent 
seed of partiality should lurk in the noble lord's mind, which 
might bias his judgment in favour of his patron, he is made a 
sort of deputy Chancellor to the House of Lords, to do the Chan- 
cellor's journej'work. In order, if possible, to make this person 
the victim of what Sir Eobert Walpole called political ingrati- 
tude, he is pointed out as the individual to whom the Lord Chan- 
cellor means to leave his office by way of legacy. It is understood 
that the learned lord means to make him his heir and legatee, by 
devising to him the Great Seal for the term of his natural life — 
that being the term for which it appears the office in future is to 
be held." 

Still, when the division came, the small Whig minorities 
knew no increase, and Brougham might have remained in 
stuff for many more years to come, fruitlessly uttering 
sarcasms against Tory Ministers and their favourites, had it 
not been for Lord Liverpool's apoplexy. This event brought 
about a contest for the succession to his office which entirely 
changed the aspect of party politics, and clothed in silk the 
ex-Attorney General of Queen Caroline. Canning had for 
some years been at the head of a liberal party in the Cabinet 
— not only advocating the cause of the Irish Eomanists, but 
proposing relaxations of the old monopolist commercial system, 
and in foreign politics swerving from the absolutism of the 
Holy Alliance, which, since the peace of Vienna, had warred 
against free institutions all over the world. The contest was 
between Canning and Peel, who, although in his heart in- 
clined to the liberal side, at this time presented himself as 
the champion of ultra-Toryism. After long intrigues, the 
King, caring little about the public questions by which rival 
factions were divided, but influenced chiefly by the Marchioness 
of Conynghani, who then ostensibly hold the station at Court 
of his mistress, commissioned Canning to submit to him the 
list of a new Administration. This proceeding being made 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 349 

known, almost all his colleagues, by tlie advice of Lord CHAP. 
Eldon, refused to serve under him, thinking that he must , 



fail in his enterprise, and that a Government would be formed a.d. i827. 
under Peel purged from all taint of liberality. In this Cannin<y's 
extremity Canning opened a negotiation with the Whigs, pioposai to 
Although, wdth splendid historical recollections to support with the 
them, they could still boast of leaders belonging to the first ^^^^s^- 
class of orators and statesmen, their position as a party was 
then very hopeless. The King, according to the maxim " we 
hate whom we have injured," had held them in utter aversion 
since he betrayed them on becoming Regent, and his abhor- 
rence of them was increased by the part they took in the 
affair of the Queen's trial, to which he imputed the cruel 
disappointment and the lamentable humiliation he had then 
experienced. The Whigs had not the consolation of being 
popular in the country, and the phrase of " storming the 
King's closet " had become obsolete. They were believed to 
be wrongheaded in their movements, and to be unfit for 
office ; and the sentence of perpetual banishment supposed to 
be passed upon them made them to be shunned by adven- 
turous aspirants to office. 

All that -VAas held out to Whigs at this time was that a 
few of the more moderate might be admitted into the new 
arrangement, with the hope that, by degrees, there might be 
a complete coalition between them and the Liberal Tories, 
headed by Canning. This proposal was extremely distasteful 
to Earl Grey, who felt that he could not be included ; and 
that, losing his position as undisputed leader of a formid- 
able and undivided party, he might soon be left without 
followers and reduced to insignificance. Brougham took a Wai-miy 
totally different view of the projected coalition, and, from '^"PP^'^^"^ 
Canning's liberal principles, had a very decent pretext for i^iougiiam. 
joining him. He declared that he would not take office 
himself, but he advised Lord Lansdowne and other staunch 
Wliigs to do so, and, with his usual energy, declared 
his readiness to cast in his lot with the new Govern- 
ment. Thus CanniDg was started as Prime Minister ; and, 
when he took his place on the Treasury Bench, Brougham 



350 EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, walked over from the Opposition side of the House, sat down 
' behind him, and stuck his knees into the back of his former 



A. D. 1827. oj)ponent. 

He refuses As a reward for his good services, the offer was made to 
chieniaron ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ dignity of Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer ; 
of the Ex- but this, unaccompanied by a peerage, lie unhesitatingly 
c equer. declined, as it would have disqualified him to sit in the House 
of Commons, and (as he said) " it would have amounted to 
shelving^ for which he was not yet quite prepared." His 
cherished ambition was to be appointed Master of the Eolls, 
so that lie might have held a high judicial office, which would 
have prepared him for the highest, and, still remaining a 
representative of the people, he might preserve and extend 
his political importance. This arrangement might easily have 
been made, as Lord Lyndhurst, who had been Master of the 
Eolls, was the new Chancellor, having declared himself for 
the nonce a violent anti-Catholic, to suit tlie religious whim 
He obtains of Gcorge IV. ; but, upon consideration, it was thought that 
and "takes' it would not be safc to give Brougham any judicial j)romo- 
^'w^Th ^^^"^ which should not entirely remove him from politics, 
bar accord- Howevor, the King's scruples were overcome as to his having 
'^^^* a silk gown, although Lord Eldon had often declared that 

they were insurmountable. He received a patent of prece- 
dence, which gave him the same rank as if he had been a 
King's Counsel ; and, once more rustling in silk, " he took 
his place within the bar accordingly." Xo step in his career 
of advancement probably ever gave him so much pleasure, 
considering the difficulty with which he had obtained it, and 
that at last he owed it to a great political move, of whicli he 
truly said that he was imrs magna. He delighted much in 
the new and prominent role he now acted as " Protector of 
the Fusion." He complained to me, but with evident com- 
placency, of the trouble he had in answering the innumerable 
applications poured in upon him for favours from the Govern- 
ment, which it was supposed that his interest could command. 
All his correspondents, he said, concluded with these words, 
" You have only to say the word, and the thing is done." 
He assured me tliat at last ho found it necessary to have a 
lithographed loiiu of answer, leaving blanks for name and 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 351 

office, asseverating that " he had no influence whatever with CHAP. 
the present Ministers, although he wished them well, and ' 



Brougham's 

defence of 
himself for 

" going 
over." 



that he could not, with any propriety or hope of success, ask a.d. i82 
any favour from them." 

Being attacked in the House of Commons for "going 
over," he boldly asserted that in now supporting Mr. Canuiug ^^^ ^^^ 
he acted with perfect consistency ; and he tried to prove to 
an astonished audience that for years past he had entirely 
concurred in the sentiments expressed by this " liberal states- 
man." Thus, in ironical strain, he attempted to show that 
on all great questions of policy there had been entire har- 
mony between them : — 

** Because I support this Government, though I go no further, 
I am to be charged wdth having acceded to an unnatural coalition. 
I am to be told there has been a monstrous and unnatural alliance 
formed between the right honourable gentleman below me and 
those friends with whom I have had, and still have, the happi- 
ness and honour of acting. An unnatural alliance— because there 
are points of diiference which should have eternally forbade the 
junction ! an unnatural alliance — because we have differed, and 
particularly of late years, on the most material questions of in- 
ternal and foreign policy ; an unnatural alliance — because, since 
the death of Lord Londonderry, we have been striving to rivet 
fast to the chariot -wheel of the Holy Alliance the triumphant 
fortunes of Great Britain ; an unnatural coalition — because we 
have been amongst those who have been the staunche.st friends to 
the liberal system of commercial policy adopted by that Ministry ; 
because, amcmgst others, I myself have been the constant sup- 
porter of those free doctrines in trade which were afterwards 
received, sanctioned, and carried into practice, by men more en- 
lightened and of far more political weight than myself! An 
unnatural coalition, undoubtedly, because we have constantly 
differed from the right honourable gentleman, as to the internal 
policy of the empire ; because we, forsooth, have ever disputed 
with him, as to that great corner-stone, the mode fitting to be 
adopted for the government of the sister kingdom of Ireland. 
Look over all the great political questions that divide some men 
and aj)proximato others at the present day. Travel with your 
eyes over the affairs of Europe, or even across the Atlantic, and 
see the dawn of liberty in South America, where millions are 
blessing the giateful light, while the hearts of millions in this 
country are beating in unison with theirs, yet rejoicing in their 



352 KEIGN OF GEOEGE IV. 

CHAP, new-born freedom. Whether we look, I say, to the east or the 
' west, to America or to Europe, to our domestic policy, or ques- 



A D 18'?7 '^^'^^^ ^^ trade, or improvement of our mercantile sj^stem, or to 
the agricultural interests of the country, — surveying all those 
great questions which divide men in their opinions, and animate 
conflicting parties and rival statesmen, I can conscientiously de- 
clare that, passing them all in review, I cannot discover one 
single tenet or sentiment, nay, one solitary feeling, which, prac- 
tically speaking, has influenced the councils of his Majesty's 
Grovernment during the last three or four years, and which did 
not find in my opinion a firm support, and in my feelings a faith- 
ful echo." 

A few days after, he was again attacked with more bitter- 
ness, and accused of having, from selfish motives, deserted 
the cause of Catholic Emancipation. He again defended 
his consistency, and added : — 

" As it is the custom to talk of sacrifices, I may mention mine. 
I have quitted a situation in this House which, considering the 
influence of opinion and feeling, was in the highest degree grate- 
ful to me ; and in which I was surrounded and (if it may be 
permitted me to say so) supported by one of the largest, most 
important, the most honourable, and — now I may say it, for I 
was privy to all their councils, and my motives cannot be sus- 
pected — the most disinterested Opposition that ever sat within 
the walls of this House, men who supported what they deemed 
right, though it kept them out of power, and confirmed their 
adversaries in office ; and who persevered in that course year 
after year, without a possible hope of benefit ever accruing to 
themselves. I have quitted that honourable and eminent situa- 
tion, enough to gratify the ambition of the proudest of men, on 
an express stipulation which utterly excludes the possibility of 
my taking office. I have done so deliberately and advisedly. I 
shall be sufficiently gratified in watching the progress of those 
opinions to which I am attached, both as to our foreign and 
domestic policy; including with the rest the Irish question, but 
not giving it a prominence which would render it exclusive, and 
impede its success by making it unpopular in this country, by 
arousing the religious jealousy of the people. The right honour- 
able gentleman has successfully established a system of liberal 
foreign policy. Upon these grounds I gave him my best as.sist- 
ance. Guided by these principles, and founding his measures on 
such grounds, in the course of his administration the right 
honourable gentleman shall have from mo that which he has 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 353 

a right, in point of consistency to demand, a cordial, zealous, and CHAP. 
disinterested support." ' 



With Brougham's support, and his own brilliant eloquence, a.d. 1827. 

Canning got on pretty well in the House of Commons ; but Coalition 

in the Lords he was " done to death." There a most formid- ntng in the 

able coalition was formed ao^ainst him, led by the Duke of J^^''f® °^ 

° . J-ords. 

Wellington and Lord Grey. The Duke, long distrustful of 
his own " civil wisdom," * had acquired new confidence, and 
was actually prepared to take upon himself the oifice of Prime 
Minister. He considered that it was usurped by Canning, 
and he was determined to expel him from it as soon as 
possible. Lord Grey was still more impatient to extinguish 
the present Government, which, if it succeeded, would leave 
him a leader without followers. Therefore a well-understood, 
although not regularly-formed, concert arose between them 
to thwart all ministerial measures. Canning sometimes swore 
that he would go into the House of Lords and defend himself 
there, and the King was said to have offered him a peerage 
for this purpose : but, if. thus transferred, he was afraid that 
in his absence Brougham might gain a great ascendancy in the 
Commons, and, under pretence of serving him, might become 
his master. He tided over the session of Parliament amidst 
shallows, rocks, and breakers, often in dano^er of runnins: 
aground or of going to the bottom ; and he reached the shore 
in a condition so shattered that he could hardly hope to be 
able again to put to sea. 

Soon after the prorogation. Brougham hurried off to the 
Northern circuit, where, with his new silk gown, he expected 
to be facile ]princeps. Scarlett, the " cock of the walk," 
although a staunch Wliig had become Canning's Attorney 
General, and thus, according to etiquette, was disqualified for 
assize business, except on special retainers. This step he bad 
taken with the strong recommendation of Brougham, whose 
zeal was supposed to have been heightened by the splendid 
opening wliich it would make for him. Yet when they after- 
wards quarrelled, the same Brougham accused Scarlett of 

* His brother, Marquis Wellesley, once said to me, "Arthur id a great 
commander, but he has no civil wisdom." 

VOL. VIII. 2 A 



354 



REIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAP. 
IV. 



A.D. 1827. 



Brougham's 
brilliant 
success for a 
time on the 
Northern 
Circuit. 



His corona- 
tion as 
Heniy IX. 



having deserted the Whig party and strove to prevent him 
from again being reconciled to it, that there might be no 
man belonging to it of superior reputation to himself as a 
lawyer. 

For a short time Brougham's sanguine hopes were realized. 
He had a brief in every cause, and his brilliant speeches 
were listened to with loud plaudits. From his very agreeable 
manners and power of amusement, he was wonderfully popular 
with his brother barristers, and, by way of " high jinks," they 
agreed to raise him to the royal dignity under the title of 
Henry IX. Accordingly, at the Grand Court, held at Lan- 
caster, he was crowned with all due pomp and solemnity. 
He instituted an Order of Merit, with an appropriate decora- 
tion, which he distributed among those whom he dubbed 
with his sword Knights of St. Henry. An ode, composed for 
the occasion, was recited, and the principal ceremonies of a 
royal coronation were mimicked with much burlesque humour 
and fun. 

Nevertheless, his Majesty's reign as Northern Autocrat 
was not of long continuance. Great as was the admiration 
excited by his eloquence and his wit, it was found that 
neither juries nor jurlges yielded obedience to him. The 
statistics at the end of the circuit showed that, in a con- 
siderable majority of the causes tried, where the new leader 
had been for the plaintiff the verdict was for the defendant ; 
and vice versa, where the new leader had been for the de- 
fendant the verdict was for the plaintiff. The points of law 
which he made and most earnestly insisted upon were almost 
all overruled. Whereupon a joke (ascribed to Tindal, after- 
wards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas) was widely circu- 
lated and created much mirth in legal circles, viz. : " whereas 
Scarlett had contrived a machine, by using which while he 
argued he could make the judges' heads nod at his plea- 
sure. Brougham had got hold of it, but, not knowing how to 
manage it, when he argued, the judges, instead of nodding, 
shook their heads." 

Truth to tell, notwithstanding his splendid abilities, 
Brougham was unaccountably deficient in nisi ^rius tact; 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 355 

and, Scarlett havino^ left the circuit, Pollock was now disco- CHAP. 

IV. 
vered to have a far better chance of the verdict than 



Brougham, and on all common occasions was decidedly pre- a.d. 1827. 
ferred to him. In practice at the bar Brougham continued 
to decline till, as we shall see, he was unexpectedly raised to 
the woolsack. 

His political career received a violent shock, and took an loth Aug. 
entirely new turn from the alarminoj failure of Canninor's 5^^^^ ^^ 

Caiiuino", 

health. Hopes had been entertained that the Liberal Prime 
Minister would rally when relieved from the anxiety of 
parliamentary business and when he saw that the aristocratic 
combination against him rather endeared him to the people. 
If his health had been re-established, I am inclined to think 
that he would have triumphed over all difficulties and long 
ruled the State. In that case, how different would have 
been the history of England in the nineteenth century ! But 
the deadly dart stuck in Canning's side ; within a few weeks 
from the prorogation of Parliament preparations were making 
for his funeral, and a subscription had been begun for raising 
a bronze statue to his memory. 

Brougham heard the fatal news with sincere regret. He Lord Gode- 
was absent from London when the new arrangement was vemment. 
made by which Lord Groderich was placed at the head of the 
Treasury. I believe that Brougham was not even consulted 
about this arrangement by any of the parties concerned. If 
his opinion had been asked by his old friends, the Whigs who 
had joined Canning, he would have warned them against con- 
tinuing in office, unless indeed from private motives of his 
own he had wished their destruction. Goderich's Government 
was as distasteful both to the Duke of Wellington and to Lord 
Grey as Canning's had been, and it met with no favour in 
any class of the community. 

When Broup^ham returned to London after the lon^r vaca- November. 
tion, he found that the Government was sure to be crushed 
before the approaching Session was a week old, and Lord 
Goderich anticipated the blow by a voluntary death. 

Now was formed the Duke of Wellington's government — ^^^- ^^-^^ 
Peel being the leader of the House of Commons, — without ^r^^!ii|^,'''^o,|'^ 

2 A 2 Goveimueiit. 



356 



EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAP. 
IV. 



A.D. 1828. 



Brougham's 
struggle for 
the lead on 
the Opposi- 
tion side. 



Golden rule 
for getting 
on well ni 
societv. 



any Whig admixture. Brougham was again reconciled to 
Lord Grey, and, co-operating with him, materially contributed 
to the advent to power of the Whigs as a party, which 
ushered in the Reform Bill. 

In the House of Commons the lead on the opposition side 
was still contested. The steady aristocratic Whigs wished to 
be considered as under Lord Althorp, bearing the illus- 
trious historical name of Spencer, and being the most honour- 
able, amiable, kindhearted, straightforward, and excellent 
of men, but destitute of eloquence, of very limited powers 
of reasoning, and of acquirements not superior to those of 
an ordinary country squire. The Whig party never took 
cordially to Bi^ougham, nor Brougham to the Whig party. 
They had no confidence in his steadiness, nor much in his 
sincerity ; and he was constantly alarming them by coquet- 
ing with the Radicals, and starting schemes of his own. 
Retaliating, he complained that they were exclusive and 
narrow minded ; that resting on their traditions they did 
not keep pace with the march of intellect, and that they 
were disposed to depress all Liberals who would not abjectly 
serve in their clique. Still he kept on good terms with 
them all, and treated the bulk of them as his subordinates. 
He stood somewhat in awe of Lord Grey ; and Lord Lans- 
downe's perpetual polished courtesy protected him from a 
sobriquet or any very familiar appellation ; but he called the 
Marquis of Tavistock " Tavy," Lord John Russell " John," 
the old Earl of Lauderdale "Jack," the present Earl of 
Derby " Ned," and the Right Hon. Edward Ellice "the Bear." 
He supported his social position by following the admonition 
of Rochefoucauld, which I have observed to have uniformly 
governed both Lyndhurst and Brougham ever since I first 
knew them, and which they seem to have thus translated : — 
" In private conversation fiatter those who are present and 
abuse and ridicule the absent, although closely connected in 
office or fi-iendsliip with those who are ]iresent — for you may 
safely trust to the law of confidence which forbids a betrayal 
of such communications, and you may be certain that the 
witty censure of others is always agi'ceable to the amour 



LIFE OF LOED BKOUGHAM. 357 

propre of the listener, so tliat it creates an impression in CHAP, 
favour of the amusing: detractor." * 



At the commencement of the new administration Brougham a.d. i828. 

censured as unconstitutional the union of civil and military Brougham 

power in the prime minister, and, professing to allay, he alarm °the 

thus tried to excite the apprehensions of his hearers. nation about 

the danger- 

" Let it not be supposed that I am inclined to exaggerate. I ^^^ power 
entertain no fear of slavery being introduced by the power of the joye/by the 
sword. It would demand a more powerful man, even, than Duke of 
the Duke of Wellington to effect such an object. The noble duke Wellington. 
may take the army, he may take the navy, he may take the mitre, Jan- -9th. 
he may take the Great Seal. I will make the noble duke a pre- 
sent of them all. Let him come on with his whc^e force, sword 
in hand, against the Constitution, and the energies of the people 
of this country will defeat his utmost efforts. Therefore, I am 
perfectly convinced that there will be no unconstitutional attack 
on the liberties of the people. These are not the times for such 
an attempt. There have been periods when the country heard 
with dismay that ' The soldier was abroad.' That is not the case 
now. Let the soldier be abroad ; in the present age he can do 
nothing. There is another person abroad — a less important 
person in the eyes of some, an insignificant person, whose labours 
have tended to produce this state of things. The schoolmaster is 
abroad ! And I trust more to him, armed with his primer, than 
I do to the soldier in full military array, for upholding and ex- 
tending the liberties of his country. I think the appointment of 
the Duke of Wellington is bad in a constitutional point of view ; 
but as to any violence being in consequence directed against the 
liberties of the country, the fear of such an event I look upon to 
be futile and groundless." 

Brougham's great exploit during the present session was Brougham's 
his memorable Speech on * Law Keform,' which may now be six hourJ' 



oil 
Law Ke- 



glanced at with wonder, although I cannot say that it would 

be justifiable to condemn any one actually to read it through, form. 

unless as a punishment for some grave delict. It lasted above 



* I am ashamed when I consider how much I am myself the dupe of this 
system, as practised among the Law Lords down to the present time. Lyndhurst, 
in conversing with me, ahuses and laughs at Brougham ; Brougham abuses and 
laughs at Lyndhurst. I am mondly certain that Brougham and Lyndhurst when 
talking togetiur abuse and laugh at Campbell. Yet, instead of checking tliem, 
I am afraid that 1 join with them in this wicked propensity.— 5f/i Sept., 1855. 



358 EEIGN OF GEOKGE IV. 

CHAP, six hours, during wkich long period of time, notwithstanding 
' the dryness of the subject, there was seldom any serious 

A.D. 1828. danger of the House being counted out. In his details and 
illustrations he did fall into a few blunders; but he dis- 
played marvellous power of memory — and stores of legal 
knowledge, multifarious if not exact. Over the whole field of 
our jurisprudence did he travel, — civil, criminal, and eccle- 
siastical — common law. equity, and conveyancing — taking a 
survey of all our tribunals from the House of Lords to the 
Court of fied jpoudre — pointing out defects and suggesting 
remedies. Having paid a graceful compliment to Peel, who 
had already shown a liberal spirit by his consolidation of the 
statutes on set'eral branches of the criminal law, he thus nobly 
concluded: — 

" In pursuing the course which I now invite you to enter 
upon, 1 avow that I look for the co-operation of the King's 
Government ; and on what are my hopes founded ? Men gather 
not grapes from thorns, nor figs from thistles. But that the vine 
should no longer yield its wonted fruit — that the fig-tree should 
refuse its natural increase — required a miracle to strike it with 
barrenness. There are those in the present Ministry whose 
known liberal opinions have lately been proclaimed anew to the 
world, and pledges have been avouched for their influence upon 
the policy of the State. With them, others may not, upon all 
subjects, agree ; upon this, I would fain hope, there will be found 
little difference. But be that as it may, whether I have the sup- 
port of the Ministers or no — to the House I look with confident 
expectation that it will control them, and assist me ; if I go too 
far, checking my progress ; if too fast, abating my speed ; but 
heartily and honestly helping me in the best and greatest work 
which the hands of the lawgiver can undertake. The course is 
clear before us ; the race is glorious to run. You have the power 
of sending your name down through all times, illustrated by 
deeds of higher fame, and more useful import, than ever were 
done within these walls. You saw the greatest warrior of the 
age — conqueror of Italy — humbler of Germany — terror of the 
North — saw him account all his matchless victories poor com- 
pared with the triumph you are nt)w in a condition to win — saw 
him contemn the fickleness of Fortune, while, in despite of her, 
he could pronounce his memorable boast, ' I shall go down to 
posterity with the Code in my hand ! ' You have vanquished 



A.D. 1828. 



LIFE OF LOED BKOUGHAM. 359 

him in tlie field ; strive now to rival him in the sacred arts of CHAP. 
peace! Outstrip him as a lawgiver, whom in arms you over- ^^' 
came ! The lustre of the Eegency will be eclipsed by the more 
solid and enduring splendour of the Eeign. The praise which 
false courtiers feigned for our Edwards and Harrj'-s, the Justinians 
of their day, will be the just tribute of the wise and the good to 
that monarch under whose sway so mighty an undertaking shall 
be accomplished. Of a truth, the holders of sceptres are most 
chiefly to be envied for that they bestow the power of thus con- 
quering, and ruling thus. It was the boast of Augustus — it 
formed part of the glare in which the perfidies of his earlier years 
were lost — that he found Rome of brick, and left it of marble ; a 
praise not unworthy a great prince, and to which the present 
reign also has its claims. But how much nobler will be the 
Sovereign's boast when he shall have it to say that he found law 
dear, and left it cheap ; found it a sealed book — left it a living 
letter ; found it the patrimony of the rich — left it the inheritance 
of the poor ; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression 
— left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence ! To 
me, much reflecting on these things, it has always seemed a 
worthier honour to be the instrument of making you bestir your- 
selves in this high matter, than to enjoy all that office can bestow 
— office, of which the patronage would be an irksome incum- 
brance, the emoluments superfluous to one content, with the rest 
of his industrious fellow-citizens, that his own hands minister to 
his wants. And as for the power supposed to follow it — I have 
lived near half a century, and I have learned that power and 
place may be severed. But one power I do prize, that of being 
the advocate of my countrymen here, and their fellow-labourer 
elsewhere, in those things which concern the best interests of 
mankind. That power, I know full well, no government can 
give — no change take away ! " 

In consequence, two royal commissions were issued, one 
for the proceedings in the common law courts ; and another 
for the law of real property. The reports of these com- 
missions were followed by various Acts of Parliament, which 
have most materially improved the juridical institutions of 
this country. Brougham showed himself enamoured of some 
crotchets, such as " Courts of lleconciliation," in which parties 
were always to meet, face to face, before they engaged in 
adverse litigation; but his suggestions, generally speaking, 



360 



EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 



CHAP. 
IV. 



A.D. 1828. 

Brougham 
05 a 
tor. 



Brooghara's 
contests for 
the county 
of West- 
morland. 



were rational and practicable. He himself has not the most 
distant notion of drawing an Act of Parliament. The hundreds 
that he has laid on the table of the House of Lords are always 
drawn by others, and he does not scruple to move a first and 
a second reading of them without his own perusal of them 
having gone farther than the title, or perhaps the preamble, 
and a few of the marginal notes.* Yet without his exertions 
the optimism of our legal procedure might have long con- 
tinued to be preached up, and Fines and Recoveries might 
still have been regarded with veneration. 

About this time Brougham changed the constituents whom 
he represented in the House of Commons. For a good many 
years he had continued the nominee of the Earl of Darlington, 
who, having eight or ten seats at his disposal, intended to 
barter them against a Dukedom. The aspirant Duke had 
professed liberal principles; but he now thought the great 
object of his ambition was more likely to be obtained by 
adhering to the present Government, and he defended his 
consistency by saying that the Duke of Wellington had come 
over to the liberal side. But this reasoning not being quite 
satisfactory to Brougham, he resigned Winchelsea by taking 
the Chiltern Hundreds, and he was immediately returned for 
Knaresborough by the Duke of Devonshire, who still sturdily 
adhered to tlie old Whig standard. 

I ought to have mentioned that Brougham felt very much 
mortified that he had not been returned by any popular 
constituency, notwithstanding the great reputation he had 
acquired for oratory and for patriotism. Twice had he stood 
for what he called his " native county." Brougham Hall, it 
may be recollected, stands in Westmorland. Although his 
ancestors were said by him to have lived there since the time 
of Antoninus, he himself had never seen the spot till bis 
education was completed and he was of mature years. But 
after his father's death, which happened some time after he 

* If it would not appenr malicious, I should like to move for a return of all 
tho IJills introduced into the House of Lords by the Lord Brougham and 
Vaux since tlio month of November, 1830, with tho number of Ihmi that have 
passed into Acts of rarliament, the stages in which the others have died, and 
the estimated expense of printing them. 



LIFE OF LOKD BEOUGHAM. 361 

himself had come to reside in London, he transferred his CHAP, 
mother from Edinburgh to Brougham Hall, and there he ' 



set up an establishment.* The Lowthers, who had migrated a.d. 1828. 
into Westmorland in comparative modern times, having 
been there only a few centuries, had usurped complete 
dominion over it, and returned both members for the 
county as well as those for several boroughs in that region. 
Brougham, with Winchelsea in his pocket, very gallantly 
offered himself for the county of Westmorland, and each 
time stood a lengthened poll. He was an excellent can- 
vasser, made capital speeches, and had all the non-electors 
on his side. But though supported by the Earl of Thanet, 
the hereditary sheriff of the county, and although a good 
many sham freeholds were created in favour of his per- 
sonal friends, who were willing to take a long journey for the 
purpose of obliging him, he never had a chance of success, 
and he was obliged to complain that from bribery and intimi- 
dation the real wishes of the electors were cruelly disappointed. 
Still, while sitting for a rotten borough, he was rather shy of 
declaiming against our corrupt representative system, and it 
was not till he was returned for Yorkshire that he came out 
with his plan for parliamentary reform. 

The Session of 1829 was entirely occupied with carrying a.d. 1829. 
the measure of Catholic emancipation, brought forward by its Catholic 
strenuous opponents, the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert tiorfcairfed. 
Peel. Brougham and the other Whig leaders gave their 
cordial aid against the bigots, who would willingly have seen 
a civil war raging in the country rather than a Koman 
Catholic sitting in Parliament. It must be confessed, 
liowever, that the " Eldonites " had more reason for their ap- 
prehensions from the never-dying aggressiveness of Romanism 
than we then supposed. The fashionable belief (of which I 
was one of the many dupes) then prevailed that the Roman 
Catholics when they were no longer persecuted would no 
longer bo intolerant, and that being relieved from all civil 
disabilities they would live quietly and contentedly, like the 

♦ His father died February 19, 1810. His mother contiuued to live till 
December 31, 1831). 



362 EEIGN OF GEORGE IV. 

CHAP, members of other religious persuasions which differ from the 
' established church. We ought to have known them better, 



A.D. 1829, and to have provided against their incurable propensity to 
prefer the power of the Pope of Kome to that of the King and 
Parliament of their native land. In granting emancipation 
we ought either to have insisted on conditions (which might 
easily have been obtained) for repressing papal aggression in 
this kingdom, or by endowing the popish clergy in Ireland, 
we should have brought them into a state of dependence on 
the Government, which would have secured their loyalty 
and peaceable demeanour. If either course had been adopted, 
no bulls would have been published to re]3eal Acts of Parlia- 
ment, and no attempt would have been made by the Vatican 
to parcel England into new bishoprics against the will of the 
Crown. Brougham, with others more far-seeing than himself, 
praised the inconsiderate manner in which the measure was 
framed, misapplying the maxim " Confidence is better than 
coercion." He afterwards expressed a wiser opinion upon the 
subject, and regretted that the precaution had not been taken, 
which is common in Roman Catholic countries, to stipulate 
with the Pope that no bull should be published in the British 
dominions till first examined by the civil authority at home, 
and that the Jesuits and other regular orders, if tolerated, 
should be under effectual legal control. Educiited in Pres- 
byterian Scotland, he has a very reasonable and salutary 
horror of the " idolatry of the Mass," of indulgences, and 
above all of the power and rapacity of the Eoman Catholic 
priesthood. 
A.D. 1830. Durinjr the Session of Parliament wliich beiran in February, 
Cessation of 1830, there was a suspension of party struggles. The de- 
duri'ng'the dining state of the health of George IV. indicated that his 
^r*^oo^''*'^'^° reign was drawing to a close, and there was an understanding 
among the three great sections into which politicians were 
then divided, — ministerial Tories, discontented ultra-Tories, 
and Whigs, — that, as Parliament must ere long be dissolved, 
they should wait for an appeal to tlio people before entering 
into any new combinations, or making any onslaught upon 
each other. The subject of Parliamentary Beform being 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 363 

brought forward, Brougham not only uttered a violent tirade CHAP. 
against universal suffrage and the ballot, but intimated an ' 



opinion that, although the representation of the people in a.d. i830. 
Parliament was not in a satisfactory state, any alteration of 
the system should be undertaken with much caution. The 
utmost extent of change which he then seemed to meditate 
was that the great unrepresented towns in England should 
have members, and that in Scotland the abuse should be 
corrected of voting for fictitious superiorities, whereby the 
counties in that part of the United Kingdom were not better 
than English rotten boroughs. It is a curious fact that 
although the storm of the Keform Bill was impending, and 
in a few months the whole empire was convulsed by it, at 
this moment Parliamentary Keform excited little interest, 
hardly a petition for it was presented during the Session to 
either house of the legislature, and the opinion of those who 
considered themselves far-sighted politicians was that for 
years to come it would only continue to be talked of by 
eccentric enthusiasts. 

The entente cordiale established between Lord Grey and state of 
the Duke of Wellington in opposing the administration of ^'^^ '^^' 
Mr. Canning, although lessening, had not entirely subsided, 
and there were still speculations about their forming a 
regular coalition in the new reign. It was quite clear that 
the Duke of Wellington must either attempt this or reconcile 
himself with the ultra-Tories, whom he had outraged by 
carrying the emancipation of the Catholics. 

Brougham was rather fearful of Lord Grey's supposed 
inclination to become less liberal, and he strenuously tried 
to draw off the Whig party from the danger of Tory con- 
tact. With this view he embraced any favourable oppor- 
tunity of throwing out sarcasms against the Government, 
and when accused by Sir Jiobert Peel of speaking disrespect- 
fully of the Duke of Wellington, he expressed high admira- 
tion for the character of this great warrior, but added " I 
despise his fawning parasites and sycophants." This caused 
a great tumult in the House, wliich was appeased in the usual 
way by an explanation that the words were spoken in a 



364 



REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
IV. 



A.D. 1830. 

George IV. 
moribund. 



24th May. 



28th June. 



Accession of 
William IV. 



Effect in 
England of 
the Revolu- 
tion in 
France in 
July 1830. 



" Parliamentary sense," and were not meant to convey any 
imputation on the personal honour of individuals. 

Bulletins had been for some time issued respecting his 
Majesty's illness, which attempted to represent it as slight, 
and always assured his faithful subjects that he was " better." 
But at last came a royal message to both Houses stating that 
"His Majesty was labouring under a severe indisposition, 
which rendered it inconvenient and painful to sign with his 
own hand public instruments requiring the sign manual." 
A bill was speedily passed, allowing, under certain precau- 
tions, the use of a stamp for this purpose ; and in a few weeks 
it was announced that "it had pleased Almighty God to 
take to his mercy our late most gracious Sovereign Lord, 
George IV., of blessed memory." 

A message from the new Sovereign recommended that the 
existing business in both Houses should be wound up as 
expeditiously as possible, to prepare for the calling of a new 
Parliament. The immediate consequence was the dispersion 
of members, with a view to the general election. 

Before the hustings were erected, suddenly there arose 
all over the kingdom, in the place of apathy and indifference, 
a state of almost unexampled excitement. This was caused by 
the great Kevolution in Paris, which exiled the elder branch of 
the Bourbons, and placed Louis Philippe, the " citizen King," 
upon the throne. Englishmen seemed to awake from torpor to 
the sudden belief that they were slaves. No imported plague 
ever produced such rapid effects, or spread so widely. In the 
year 1848 a similar epidemic travelled all over Europe except 
Great Britain, which on this occasion remained unscathed ; 
but in 1830 Great Britain was more severely visited by the 
malady than any other country in Europe.* 

The Proclamation for a new Parliament strikingly exhi- 
bited the state of the public mind. Now the great object of 
the electors was to find out champions on whom they thought 
they could rely in fighting for popular rights. 



* Phenomena ex|)lainp(l by the tlioory tlint the corrupt state of our repre- 
Btiitation exposed us to the contaj^ion at tlie former era, and the purified state 
of our representation saved us from it at the latter. 



LIFE OF LOPwD BKOUGHAM. 365 

Hitherto, from the earliest times, although towns had jy ^* 

elected as their representatives strangers distinguished by 

their talents and public services, counties, without a single ^■^- 1830. 
exception, had confined their choice to the great landholders, Srougiiam 
or the members of ancient families residing and having pro- member for 
perty within their limits. Nevertheless the proud county of of VoX^^ 
York, abounding in such candidates indigenous to the soil, 
sent a deputation to Henry Brougham, who had not an acre 
of land in either of the three ridings, and had no connection 
with the locality, except that twice a year he plied for business 
at the York assizes. The freeholders, so eager to be repre- 
sented by him, did not even know that he had a patch of 
ground in Westmorland, and they had never heard of him as the 
representative of the De Burghams. But they regarded him 
as a man who, by brilliant talents, had raised himself from 
obscurity ; who upon all important questions had taken the 
liberal side with zeal and energy, and who at the present 
crisis seemed to them the fittest interpreter of their principles 
and their wishes. This innovation was rather a shock to Whig 
traditions and prejudices, and many of the party, thinking it 
unconstitutional that a man locally unconnected with a county 
should represent it in Parliament, would have been better 
pleased that a Tory, if a true Yorkshireman, should have 
beaten the Liberal intruder. Brougham himself, however, 
entertained no such silly scruples, and at once consented to 
be started as a candidate. 

No man ever vvent through such fatigue of body and mind 
as he did for the three following weeks. The assizes at York 
were about to begin, and he chanced to have a good many 
retainers. Instead of giving these up, he appeared in court 
and exerted himself as an advocate with more than wonted 
spirit. Having finished an address to the jury, he would 
throw off his wig and gown and make a speech to the electors 
in the Castle-yard on " the three glorious days of Paris," and 
the way in which the people of England might peaceably 
obtain still greater advantages. Ho would then return to 
court and reply in a cause respecting right of common of 
turbary, having in the twinkling of an eye picked up from 



366 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, his junior a notion of all that had passed in his absence. But 
' what is much more extraordinary, before the nomination day 
A.D. 1830. arrived he had held public meetings and delivered stirring 
speeches in every town and large village within the county — 
still day by day addressing juries, and winning or losing ver- 
dicts. By these means, from the time when polling began, 
his election, which neither he nor his sober-minded supporters 
had seriously considered possible, appeared absolutely certain. 
Lord Morpeth, from great personal popularity as well as from 
hereditary love for his race, took the lead ; but Brougham 
was far higher on the poll than Stuart Wortley, who had 
extraordinary advantages both personal and family, — counter- 
balanced at this moment by the heavy drawback that he was 
against progress, and was willing that Old Sarum, without 
inhabitants, should send as many members to represent the 
people in Parliament as the whole of Yorkshire. County 
elections at that time lasting fifteen days, excited pro- 
digious interest. All England looked with eagerness on this 
contest, and, when Brougham's return was actually pro- 
claimed, the triumph was said to form a grand epoch in the 
history of parliamentary representation. 
He is An ancient ceremony remained, of which Brougham was 

^char^er as I'^thcr afraid. He had to buckle on a sword, to cover his 
Knight ot head with a cocked hat, to wear a pair of long spurs, to mount 
a charger, and, with his colleague, to ride round the castle of 
York, and through some of the principal streets of the city. 
He was not much of a horseman, and several times he was in 
danger of the fate which befel IVIr. Justice Twisden in Lord 
Chancellor Shaftesbury's famous equestrian procession to 
Westminster Hall. But the ceremony concluded without 
his meeting witli any disgrace, and the Yorkshiremen de- 
clared that he was every way worthy to be their repre- 
sentative. 

This may be considered the proudest passage of Brougham's 
life. His return for Yorkshire was the spontaneous declara- 
tion of the most numerous, wealthy, and intelligent con- 
stituency in England that he was the fittest man to guide the 
destinies of his country. And he really may be said to have 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 367 

gained this elevation by good, without any mixture of evil, CHAP, 
arts. The honour was wholly unsolicited, and he had carried ' 

his election not only without any scintilla of corruption in the a.d. 1830. 
way of bribery or treating, but he never had resorted to the 
tricks or cajolery of a demagogue, and to please the multi- 
tude he had not advanced any doctrines which were not 
recognised by our constitution. A little envy and jealousy 
may ha.ve been felt by a few of the Whig leaders, and danger 
was predicted to our representative system from such a viola- 
tion of established usage : but the event was regarded with 
general satisfaction and good-will. 

The new member for Yorkshire, when riding round the 
castle girt with bis sword, might fairly be considered the fore- 
most man in England by himself as well as by others. I do 
not think he can be taxed with inordinate vanity in the 
speech which he then made, and I dare say he was sincere at 
the moment in the resolutions which he then announced, 
although he afterwards saw good reason for breaking them. 
Said he : — 

" I have denounced the Duke of Wellington the ' general officer 
at the head of the government,^ and in spite of him your liberties 
are safe. I am now possessed of a power (having such a con- 
stituency to support me) that will enable me to compel the 
execution of measures which I have only hitherto been venti- 
lating. Nothing on earth shall ever tempt me to accept place. I 
have more pride in representing Yorkshire than I could derive 
from any office the King can bestow, because I have more effec- 
tual means of being useful to my fellow-citizens, and of gaining 
for myself an honest fame." 

Till Parliament actually met it remained a mystery what Condition of 
part ike Duke of Wellington was to play. He had it in his Wellington 
power long to remain Minister. He stood well in the opinion ''^^^^'"'^^^i'- 
of the Liberals from the repeal of the Corporation and Test 
Act, and from the emancipation of the Catholics ; and had he 
gone on to consent that JJirmingham, ]\Iancliester, and the 
unrepresented great towns, should immediately have mem- 
bers — with a promise that the rotten part of the representation 
should gradually be examined and repaired — at the same 



'368 REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, time explaining his views of foreign policy, so as to relieve iis 

' from the dread of Absolutism, and the Holy Alliance — he 

A.D. 1830. would have had sufficient support to enable him to defy the 

ultra-Tories on the one hand, and the ultra-Kadicals on 

the other. But he was now found wanting in " civil wisdom." 

He sadly undervalued the desire which had suddenly sprung 

up in the public mind for parliamentary reform ; he not only 

believed himself, but was convinced that all sensible men 

believed, our representative system, with all its anomalies, to 

He vainly be perfect ; he was deeply grieved by his separation from that 

piea3he^^ section of the Tories who condemned his ecclesiastical policy ; 

ultra- lie thought that, reciprocally, they were willing to be re- 

conciled to him; and he w^as resolved to bring about this 

reconciliation, disregarding the Whigs, who, for a while, had 

served his turn. 

2nd Nov. Accordingly he now took a decided part, which speedily 

He insults brousfht on a crisis. Whereas the whole of the Liberal party 

the Liberals i j 

approved of the expulsion of Charles X., and thought that the 
Belgians were fully justified in throwing off the Dutch yoke, 
he made the King say in his speech from the tin-one, " The 
enlightened administration of the King of the Netherlands 
has not preserved his dominions from revolt ;" and in his 
own speech in the debate on the Address he pronounced 
our representative system, as then existing, to be a piece of 
absolute perfection, liable to no censure, and capable of no 
improvement. 

Unwittingly he had doomed his Government to destruction. 
The whole Liberal party felt that they were insulted, and 
impartial discerning men declared that he had committed an 
irretrievable error. 

The very same night Brougham had given notice in the 
House of Commons of a motion for leave to bring in a bill to 
amend the representation of tlie people in Parliament, and 
had thus spoken of tlie French Kevolution of July : — 

" That levolution, whicli in my conscience I believe to be 

the rao.st j^loricMis in the annals of mankind, whether we regard 
the promptitude with wliich the acts of lawless despotism weie 
repelled, or the yet more glorious temperance which distinguished 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 369 

the combatants after the battle was gained ; for it is far more CHAP, 
glorious for a people to gain a conquest over their passions when 
roused to vengeance than to overcome a tyrant in the field of ^^ ^^^^ 
battle." 

Strange to say, the ultra-Tories were not in any degree 
propitiated by the Duke's concessions to their prejudices. 
They exclaimed, " Nusquam tuta fides! His vow against 
parliamentary reform is like his vow against Catholic eman- 
cipation, and before the end of the session he may propose a 
bill for universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by 
ballot." They swore that they would no longer delay the 
gratification of their vengeance. 

The fall of the Duke of Wellington's Government was now 
inevitable, and it was hastened by the very ill-judged step of 
preventing the King from going to dine with the Lord Mayor 
and Corporation of London according to his engagement, 
under the pretence that from the alleged spread of disaffec- 
tion it would be dangerous for his Majesty to trust himself 
among the citizens. A display of weakness and infatuation 
so striking indicated preordained perdition. Thus Brougham 
professed to lament what he now beheld : — 

" I wish to Heaven that I had not lived to see the day when 
the forgetfulness of the people to the merits of the Soldier, and 
the forgetfulness of the Soldier to his own proper sphere of 
greatness, display to England, to Europe, and to the world an 
occasion when he cannot accompany the Sovereign on his journey 
into the heart of an attached and loyal population."* 

In the midst of these proceedings of national interest Biougham 
Brougham drew the notice of the public to a combination aaainiJthr 
against himself of the attorneys and solicitors, in consequence? attorneys, 
as he said, of a bill he had introduced for the establishment 
of local jurisdiction, which they thought would lessen their 
profits. The learned gentleman read a letter addressed to 
him containing this threat, which he complained of as a 
breach of privilege. He exclaimed : — 

"Let them not lay the. flattering unction to their souls that I 
can be prevented by a combination of all the attorneys in Chris- 



* Speech in the House of Commons, 8tli November, 1830. 
VOL. VII I. 2 B 



370 



HEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
IV. 

A.D. 1830. 



15th Nov. 



16th Nov. 

Formation 
of Lord 
Grey's Go- 
vernment. 



What was 
to be done 
with 
Brougham ? 



tendom, or any apprehensions of injury to myself, from endea- 
vouring to make justice pure and cheap. These gentlemen are 
much mistaken if they think I will die without defending myself. 
The question may be whether barristers or attorneys shall pre- 
vail ; and I see no reason why barristers should not open their 
doors to clients without the intervention of attorneys and their 
long bills of costs. If I discover that there is a combination 
against me, I will decidedly throw myself upon my clients — upon 
the country gentlemen, the merchants and manufacturers — and if 
I do not, with the help of this House, beat those leagued against 
me, I shall be more surprised at it than at any misadventure of 
my life." 

But all interest was absorbed in the anticipated ministerial 
crisis, and before long a question was brought forward on 
which Liberals and ultra-Tories could unite in a vote against 
the Government — when its doom was sealed. This was on 
Sir Henry Parnell's motion to inquire into the expendi- 
ture of the Civil List. Ministers were relieved that death 
should come to them in so gentle a shape. They were well 
pleased to find themselves in a minority, and next day they 
announced their resignation, saying that "they only held 
their offices till their successors were appointed." 

Earl Grey was sent for to submit to the King the list of 
a new administration. And now began his difficulties, the 
greatest of which was — what ivas to he done ivith Brougham P 
He dreaded the member for Yorkshire in the Cabinet, and 
the danger w^as appalling of entirely excluding him from the 
new arrangement ; for in that case he might head a Eadical 
opposition, and Whig rule would be very brief. Lord Grey 
said to Lord Althorp : — " May he not belong to the Govern- 
ment, and be obliged to support us, without being in the 
Cabinet? He may like to be xlttorney General. It is a 
high and a very lucrative office. He does not care much for 
money, to be sure, but he jirofesses a great liking to his 
profession as an advocate, and he may not be contented to 
sacrifice it for a political office which he might not long hold. 
Let us see whotlier he will not be our Attorney General." 
Lord Althorp, who, from sitting so long with Brougham 
in the House of Commons, better knew his insubordinate 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 371 

nature, shook his head, but said there could be little harm in CHAP, 
the offer if Lord Grey had the courage to make it. Brougham ' 



was accordingly asked to call on Lord Grey, and the offer a.d. 1830. 
was made, but was rejected with scorn and indignation. 

What Brougham's views and wishes originally were with 
respect to the office he should fill on the advent of the Whigs 
to power, I never could rightly learn. I hardly think that 
he had long aimed at the Great Seal, for this necessarily 
involved the loss of his dignity as member for the county of 
York, and for ever excluded him from the House of Commons, 
— the only scene for which, as an orator, his powers were well 
adapted. He positively refused on this occasion to make any 
counter proposal, or to give a hint of the sort of place he 
desired, saying that "he was resolved not to be included 
in the arrangement, although he should be disposed to 
support the new government in as far as he conscientiously 
could" These portentous words caused great dismay, but the 
conference broke up, and the hour of the two Houses assem- 
bling arrived, without anything being settled respecting his 
appointment. 

It so happened that this was the very day for which his Hisexpio- 

11 • o Tt T T^ sionintlie 

notice stood on the great question of Parliamentary Eeform ; House of 
and he entered the House evidently in a very perturbed state, ^°^™°°'^' 
having resolved to bring it on, whatever confusion might arise 
from such a discussion in the existing distracted state of the 
Government. Lord Althorp, representing the Whig nucleus, 
suggested that it would be improper to undertake any im- 
portant debate after the communication from Sir Kobert Peel 
that he and his colleagues only held office till their successors 
were appointed, and no appointment of successors had yet 
taken place. 

" I trust, therefore," added he " that for this reason, as well as 
for the advantage of the question itself, my hon. and learned 
friend will comply with the suggestion I make, and postpone his 
motion till we can enter upon the subject more coolly and deli- 
berately." [Hear, liear, hear.'] 

Mr. Brougham : " I do feel the greatest repugnance to putting 
off the motion which stands for this evening. I admit that 

2 B 2 



372 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, no question of so mucli importance has ever been brouglit 
forward when there was such a deficiency in the executive 



A.D. 1830. 



Government; but my difficulty is this — that no question of 
so much importance — no question involving such mighty and 
extensive interests — has ever been discussed at all within the 
walls of this House. Sensible, therefore, of the deep respon- 
sibility which I have incurred in undertaking to bring forward 
a question of such vast importance, I cannot help feeling the 
difficulty in which I am placed in being called upon by my 
noble friend to defer it, — especially as his suggestion has been 
backed in some degree by the apparent concurrence of others. I 
am anxious, both from my sincere respect for the House and out 
of regard to the interests of the question itself, to defer to the 
opinion of those by whom it must ultimately be decided. I throw 
myself, therefore, fully,, freely, and respectfully, upon the House. 
If the motion be put off, I own it will be contrary to my opinion 
and to my wishes. And further, as no change that may take place 
in the administration can hy any possibility affect me, I beg it to be 
understood that in putting off the motion I will put it off until the 26th 
of this month, and no longer. I will then, and at no more distant 
period, bring forivard the question of Parliamentary Reform, whatever 
may be the then state of affairs, and whosoever may then be his Majesty's 
Ministers.'^ 

As soon as he had finished, he cast a glance of defiance 
behind him, stalked off to the bar, and disappeared. 
Sensation At the distance of a quarter of a century I retain a lively 

pio ucc jy j.qqqIIqqiIqj^ Qf i\^Q sensation which this scene produced. He 
concluded his speech in a low and hollow yoice, indicating 
suppressed wrath and purposed vengeance. The bravest held 
their breath for a time, and in the long pauses which he 
allowed to intervene between his sentences a feather might 
have been heard to drop. It was evident to all present that 
there was a mutiny in the Whig camp, and the Tories were 
in hopes that the new Government would prove to be an 
abortion. 
Kov. i7tii. The following day Brougham showed in the House, by liis 
words as well as his looks, that no accommodation had 
taken place. A proposal being made that the consideration 
of election petitions should be put off till the crisis was over, 
he said, in a very sulky and sarcastic tone : — 



A.D. 1830. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 373 

" I am decidedly opposed to this motion. I think it a matter CHAP, 
of the utmost necessity that you should fill up your numbers ; 
and entertaining that opinion, I cannot but be astonished both at 
the proposition itself and still more at the reason given in its 
favour. What do we want with the presence of the Ministers on 
election petitions ? What do we want with Ministers ? We can 
do as well (I speak with all possible respect of any future Mi- 
nistry) — we can do as well without them as with them. I have 
nothing to do with them, except in the respect I bear them, and 
except as a member of this House. I state this for the informa- 
tion of those whom it may concern." 

When he came next morning among his brother barristers 
in the robing room, he declared that "he should take no 
office whatever, and that when he was returned for York- 
shire he made his election between power and the service of 
the people." 

I do not certainly know the exact turn which the nego- Conjecture 
tiation then took, but I have heard, and I believe, that the manner in 
Whig leaders still expressing a strong desire that Brougham ^^Ij^^^^^t^ 
should join them on his own terms, he caused a verbal inti- Great Seal. 
mation to be given to them that he expected an offer of the 
Great Seal. Lord Grey, although well stricken in years, 
was supposed at this time to be jplatonically under the fasci- 
nation of the beautiful Lady Lyndhurst, and to have had 
a strong desire to retain her husband as his Chancellor. 
It is said that he expressed considerable doubts whether 
Brougham, whose stock of Common Law was slender, and 
who knew nothing about Equity whatever, was well qualified 
to preside in the Court of Chancery. The general feeling of 
those present at the conference, however, was that Brougham's 
adhesion was indispensably necessary to the formation of the 
Government, and that he must have a carte blanche. Whether 
this be fact or fiction, certain it is that on Saturday, the 20th 
of November, it was announced from authority that Brougham 
was to be Chancellor, and coming into the Court of King's 
Bench on that day he accepted the congratulations of bis 
friends on his elevation. He had no misj]:ivinn:s as to 
his sufficiency for the office, and 1 believe that he was more 
delighted than he had been a few months before, when girt 



^74 KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, -^itli a sword, and wearing long spurs, lie rode round the 
' castle of York as knight of the shire. I ventured to give him 

A.D. 1830. some good advice, which he repaid twenty years after, when 
I was myself made a judge ; and all that was said to him 
seriously or jocularly he took in good part. It was expected 
that he would have made a flaming oration in taking leave of 
us, in the King's Bench, and a great crowd had assembled 
to hear it, but, as the Court was rising, he contented himself 
with making a silent bow to the bench and another to the 
bar. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 375 



CHAPTEK Y. 

LORD CHANCELLOR. 

NOVEMBER, 1830 — NOVEMBER, 1834. 

On Monday, the 22nd of November, 1830, the Great Seal was chap. 
delivered to him by the King, at St. James's Palace, and he ' 

took his place on the woolsack; but being still a commoner, ^ ^ jggQ 
and plain Henry Brougham, he acted only as Speaker of the He takes his 
House of Lords. His patent of nobility was in preparation, J^ooj^ack^^ 
but had not been completed. I believe that, although he saw 
an immense crowd below the bar, on the steps of the throne, 
and in the galleries, who had come to see him inaugurated, 
he regretted, for a time at least, the elevation he had 
reached; for an animated discussion immediately arose in 
the House respecting the formation of the new ministry 
and parliamentary reform, in which he was pointedly alluded 
to; and, as yet having no right to open his mouth in the 
assembly, unless to put the question, he was condemned 
to silence, and by the impatience he manifested he seemed 
to signify that he could have vindicated himself and his col- 
leagues much better than Lord Grey or Lord Lansdowne had 
done. 

Next morning, without yet having been sworn in or installed 
in the Court of Chancery, he took his place on the woolsack 
to hear a Scotch appeal. The counsel were surprised to find 
that, according to a form which had been long disused, they 
were compelled by the Yeoman Usher of the Black Eod to 
make three congees as they were marched up to the bar, when 
the Chancellor, wlio liad been covered, took off his cocked hat 
witli mucli solemnity, and sinfiiallcd to them to bejiin. Not- 
witlistanding the contempt which he expressed for the " trap- 
pings of his oflice," he was by no means without a taste for 



376 



EEIGN OF "WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 

A.D. 1830. 



He lecomes 
Bai oa 
Brougham 
and Vaux. 



Tuesday, 
23id ^o^^ 



scenic representation, when he had to play the principal 
character. 

The appeal heard was Grieve v. Wilson, respecting the right 
of hyjpothec of Scotch landlords on the produce of the located 
land. He laughed a good deal at this law, and said that it 
must immediately be altered, as the doctrines " ventilated " 
in the appeal would, if known, excite great alarm in Mark 
Lane. He was very pleasant and jocose, but his humour was 
more agreeable to the bystanders than to the objects of it — the 
Lord Ordinary and the Lord Justice Clerk Boyle, the latter 
of whom was said to have made a grave remonstrance against 
the ridicule cast upon him. 

But the same day there was much laughing at the expense 
of the Lord Chancellor himself, when it was announced that 
his patent of nobility was completed, and that he was now a 
Baron, by the title of " Lord Brougham and Vaux." To some 
private friends he had formerly stated in confidence that he 
was entitled to a Barony of Vaux by descent through the female 
line, but no one imagined that he would do so unusual a thing 
as to add this word to a new created peerage; for all the 
instances (such as Hamilton and Brandon, Buccleuch and 
Queensberry, Leven and Melville, Say and Sele, or Dudley 
and Ward) of the copulative being so used are where two 
titles of the same grade, having been separately created, 
are united by descent in one individual. Among the in- 
numerable jokes against this new title, the most cutting, 
if not the best, was that " Henry Brougham had destroyed 
himself, and was now Vaux et jprseterea nihil." To meet 
these jokes, and to show how little he cared about titles, he 
has always, with real or affected humility, refused to sign 
his name as peers usually do, but signs H. Brougham, or 
more commonly H. B.* 

The following is the entry in the journals of his taking his 
seat as a peer : — 

* In former limes English peers used always to sign their christian name 
as well as name of dignity, merely substituting this for their surname ; but if 
Brougham was aware of the old latshion, I believe tliat ho had no thought of 
reviving it, and was only desirous of doing something out of the common 
course. 



A.D. 1830. 



LIFE OF LOKD BEOUGHAM. 377 

" The Duke of Gloucester informed tbeir Lordships that his CHAP. 

Majesty had been pleased to elevate Henry Brougham, Esq., Lord 

Chancellor of Great Britain, to the dignity of a peer of the realm 

by the title of Baron Brougham and Vaux. The Lord Chancellor, „ . 

'^ He IS made 

on hearing this intimation, quitted the Woolsack, and left the a peer. 

House to robe. He speedily returned, and was introduced as a 
Baron by the Marquess W'ellesley and Lord Durham. His Lord- 
ship took the oaths, resumed his seat on the woolsack, and re- 
ceived the congratulations of his friends." * 

The same day he laid on the table, in a very strange and His claim of 
irregular manner, a copy of a petition he had presented to barony. 
the Crown, claiming a right to be summoned to Parliament 
as representative of an ancient barony of Vaux, which he 
alleged had descended upon him through the female line. 
The House had no jurisdiction to take cognizance of such 
a claim, except on a reference by the Crown, and such a 
reference is only made upon the report of the Attorney 
General that a prima facie case is made out by the claimant. 
Brougham never ventured to take any step to substantiate 
his claim, and it must be considered a mere dream or fiction. 
He uttered nothing on this occasion, and, to the astonish- 
ment of all present, the House rose without the sound of his 
voice being heard, except in putting the question, " That this 
House do now adjourn." 

On this very day on which he took his seat as a peer, a Attack upon 
motion being made in the House of Commons for the issuing Housp^of^^ 
of a writ to elect a new member in his stead, he was <-'ommons. 
violently assailerl by Mr. Croker, who, recapitulating the 
protestations he had made there and elsewhere against 
accepting any place in the new Government, and his repeated 
vows never to exchange the representation of Yorkshire for 
any honours which the Crown could confer, called for — 

" an explanation of his having suddenly vacated his seat in that 
House by becoming Lord High Chancellor and Baron Brougham 
and Vaux ; which either showed a successful grasping at office 



* On inspertinp^ the Journal I find :— " Friday, 19th November, Ds. Lynd- 
hurst, Cancellarius ; Monday, 22nd November, llenricus Brougham, Caucel- 
lariua; Tuesday, 23rd November, Dd. liroughum and Vaux, Cancellarius. 



CHAP. 
V. 



A.D. 1830. 



Defence of 
him by 
Mackintosh 
and Macau- 
lay. 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

by false pretences, or a sudden change of purpose unexplainea 
and inexplicable." 

" M7\ Duncomhe deeply lamented the time and the circum- 
stances in which that distinguished person had allowed him- 
self to be seduced from the commanding eminence which he 
occupied in that House. This was the place in which his 
transcendant abilities were wanted. The noble and learned 
Lord had often told them of ' another place from which they 
had little to expect,' and yet he had gone to that place — 
never to return. If he had remained member for Yorkshire 
until he had redeemed his pledges and fulfilled his promises 
by carrying his important measures respecting negro slavery 
and parliamentary reform, he might have gracefuU}^ retired to 
elsewhere. His appointment would then have been hailed with 
the acclamations of his friends ; whereas it is now only satis- 
factory to those who hate him, and take a malignant pleasure in 
seeing his fair fame for ever tarnished." 

" Sir James Mackintosh pointed out the unfairness of such attacks, 
when, though unfounded, they could not be repelled without dis- 
closures which could not possibly be then made." 

" Mr. Macaulay. — I owe the noble and learned Lord no poli- 
tical allegiance, but as a member of this House I cannot banish 
from my memory the extraordinary eloquence with which he 
has made these walls resound — an eloquence which, being gone, 
has left nothing equal to it behind ; and when I behold the 
departure of that great man from amongst us, and when I see 
the place in which he usually sat, and from which he has so 
often astonished us by the mighty powers of his mind, occupied 
so very differently this evening by the honourable member 
who commenced this assault, I cannot express the emotions 
to which such a contrast gives rise. An opponent who would 
sooner have burnt his tongue than used such language in his 
presence, now thinks he may rail at him with impunity ! " 

The defence was interrupted by a cry of Order, and after 
explanations and apologies, the vote passed for issuing the 
writ.* 



♦ 1 Hansard, N. S. G49. Wlien IMacaiilay first came forward Brougham 
professed to i)atronisc him; but as the client's fame ilourished the patron's 
jealousy was excited, and gradually an unfriendly feeling grew up between 
them, till at \n>t INIacaulay spoke of Brougham as " a tiulud rhetorician," and 
Brougham d(vsignnted Macaulay "a tohuably good writer of romnncos." 
Brougham thought that nothing had appeared during the present gcucration 



LIFE OF LOED BKOUGHAM. 379 



The new Lord Chancellor, after deliberating for three CHAP, 
days whether he should take any public notice of the attack, 



asked Lord Grosvenor, when presenting a petition in favour a.d. 1830. 
of parliamentary reform, to allude to what had lately passed 
in the House of Commons. Accordingly the noble Earl said 
that — 

" Seeing his noble and learned friend on the woolsack, after 
having been so long the ornament of the other House, and now 
likely to be the ornament of this, he was anxious to give him an 
opportunity — if he chose to avail himself of it — of correcting 
some misrepresentations and replying to some charges made 
against him in another place." 

" Lord CJiancellor. — ' My Lords, I am obliged to my noble His maiden 
friend for the opportunity he has afforded me of stating my thr^oJi^e 
opinions upon the subject of his petition, but many oppor- of Lords. 
tunities will soon occur when I may do so with more regu- 
larity. That my opinions may be already known to your Lord- 
ships in common with the great mass of my fellow citizens is 
not improbable, and I hope may not be to my disadvantage. 
It is painful to me, and the more so from the unexpected appeal 
of my noble friend, that now when for the first time I have 
the honour of addressing your Lordships, I should be called 
upon to speak of a subject in every way of such inferior im- 
portance as myself. Nevertheless, as misrepresentations have 
gone abroad, and remarks of an unfriendly nature touching the 
consistency of my public conduct have been uttered elsewhere, 
should I now shrink — or rather let me say, should I decline 
offering a few words in deference to your Lordships, and I may 
add, out of respect to myself, — after the call which has been made 
on me, it might wear the appearance of shrinking from attack. 
It will be sufficient, however, to say very briefly, that I bear, 
and shall continue to bear, with perfect equality of mind, every- 
thing that may be said of me in any quarter whatsoever ; that 
I am not at all surprised, but the contrary, that a person 
respectable for his knowledge and talent (meaning Croker*), 



deserving the name of history, except his own * History of the House of Lan- 
caster.' 

* At this time there was enmity between Brougham and Croker which 
seemed imi)laca]>lo ; but when Brougham, as a discarded ex-Chancellor, was 
assailing the Whig Government, they became fast friends, and warmly com- 
plimented each other both in public and private. 



380 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 



A.D. 1830. 



Brougham's 
owu aston- 
ishmeat at 
finding^ him- 
self Chan- 
cellor. 



has been led into errors concerning me, from ignorance of my 
character ; and that I bear, with an equal mind, what has been 
said by that individual under the influence of mistake. I am 
not astonished at the observations which have been made by 
persons in another place expressing their astonishment at my 
present position; they cannot feel greater astonishment than I 
myself do at my consenting to my elevation to the distinguished 
place which I now hold in his Majesty's councils. I share their 
astonishment, for they cannot be more stricken with wonder 
than I am, that at this late period, at this eleventh hour, I 
should have overcome my repugnance to resign my high station 
as representative for Yorkshire. Up to that time when I am 
reported to have stated my intention of not severing myself from 
the representation of Yorkshire, I no more contemplated the 
possibility of my being prevailed upon to quit the station I held 
for that which I now hold, than I at the present moment fancy 
I shall ever go back to that House from which the favour of his 
Majesty has raised me.* I need not add, that in changing my 
station in Parliament, the principles which have ever guided 
me remain unchanged. When I accepted the high office to 
which I have been called, I did so in the full and perfect con- 
viction that far from disabling me to discharge my dut}^ to my 
country — far from rendering my services less efficient, it would 
but enlarge the sphere of my utility. The thing which dazzled 
me most in the prospect opening to my view was not the gewgaw 
splendour of the place, but that it seemed to affi)rd me, if I were 
honest — on which I could rely ; if I were consistent — which I 
knew to be matter of absolute necessity in my nature ; if I were 
as able as I was honest and consistent — a field of more extended 
exertion. That by which the Great Seal did dazzle my eyes, and 
induced me to quit a station which till this time I deemed the 
most proud an Englishman could enjoy, was that it seemed to 
hold out to me the gratifying prospect that in serving my King 
I should be better able to serve m}^ country.' " "f 

His fitness " The lady protests too much, methinks." Although born 
in Scotland, he had not been endowed with the " second 



* It is a curious fact, while almost all the members of the House of Peers 
are in the habit of fining into the Peers' gallery in the House of Commons, 
Brougham, whether undiu" a vow or from want of curiosity, has never bodily 
been under the roof of the House of Commons since he ceased to be a member 
of it. 

t 1 Hansard, 074. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 381 

sight," or, coming events casting their sliadows before, he CHAP. 
might have seen visions of himself in battle array against ' 

his former associates and his former principles. His accept- a.d. i830. 
ance of the Great Seal, if fairly offered to him, required no 
justification, and by excusing he accused himself. Eegard 
being had to the various functions of the office of Chancellor, 
he was, upon the whole, by no means unqualified for it. His 
acquaintance with the practice of the Equity Courts was 
necessarily slender ; but he was well imbued with a general 
knowledge of jurisprudence, and conscious of his unrivalled 
industry and energy, he might well hope to perform in this 
department better than if he had been reared as a mere " con- 
veyancer and equity draughtsman." To carry into effect his 
great plan for reforming our jurisprudence, his position as 
Lord Chancellor would give him influence which he could 
not possess in any other ; and he might, at the same time, 
still promote the cause of education, the effectual suppression 
of the slave trade, and all other such salutary measures, more 
effectually than if he had remained in the House of Commons, 
the representative of Yorkshire. Therefore for the simple 
fact of his being in possession of the Great Seal, I do not 
see that any apology was required. Others were astonished 
merely because he had so peremptorily and solemnly declared, 
while the new Government was in the process of formation, 
that he would take no office whatever under Lord Grey — 
at the same time showing strong symptoms of disappointment 
and irritation. Whence his own astonishment arose it is 
more difficult to conjecture. Burke, in his treatise, *0n 
the Sublime and Beautiful,' says — " Astonishment is that 
state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with 
some degree of horror." Why should this state of Lord 
Brougham's soul have been produced by the Whig leaders 
offering him the only office which he would accept, knowing 
that he could not be left out without imminent peril to their 
stability, or by liis accepting an office which he desired, and 
in which ho reasonably thought that ho might usefully servo 
his country ? 

Being indifferent as to the pecuniary emoluments of this 



382 



KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 



uD. 1830. 



His high 
plans and 
aspirations. 



office, lie was mucli pleased with the immense patronage 
which belonged to it — partly from the pleasure which he sin- 
cerely felt in being able disinterestedly to oblige a friend, but 
partly also, perhaps, from considering what a high price he 
could now pay for praise, and how lavishly it would be be- 
stowed upon him. At the same time, I believe, that he did 
form very high and noble designs — overrating, I fear, his 
powers of performance. Of the ancients, his great model 
was Cicero, whom he hoped to rival as an orator and a fine 
writer. Of the moderns, he thought Lord Bacon's fame 
was most to be envied, and there was no department of 
genius in which he did not hope that he might fairly enter 
into competition with this " brightest of mankind." As 
a judge he boldly and openly said he should excel him, 
intending that the decisions "Temjpore Brougham,'' should 
be received with as much reverence as Lord Hardwicke's ; 
and in philosophy he had treatises part begun, and part 
conceived in his own mind, which would excel the Novum 
Organum.^ 

It was not till Thursday, the 25th of November, that he was 
regularly installed in the Court of Chancery and sworn, — 
" the Master of the Eolls holding the book." He wished to 
make this ceremony as imposing as possible, and it was 
deferred that he might have as much of royalty and nobihty 
about him as he could muster. He was attended by three 
royal highaesses, the Duke of Sussex, the Duke cf Gloucester, 
and Prince Leopold, and by various noblemen, of whom the 
Duke of Devonshire was highest in rank. It was thought, 
that after the fashion of Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, 
Lord Bacon, and the old Chancellors, he would, on being 
placed in the " marble chair " have delivered an oration upon 
the duties of Chancellor, and the manner in which he pro- 
posed to perform them ; but he followed the more modern 
precedent, by bowing out the grandees who attended him 
as soon as the oath was recorded on the motion of the 
Attorney General, and then proceeding with the common 
business of the Court.- 

♦ Some of these he afterwards gave to the world. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 383 

The new Ministers were to stand or fall by their promised CHAP, 
bill for parliamentary reform, and at the first Cabinet which 



they held after their installation the subject was discussed, a.b. isso. 
The Chancellor proposed that his bill, which he was so impa- Concoction 
tient to introduce on the memorable 16th of November, form Bill, 
(when he declared that no change in the construction of the 
ministry could possibly affect him), should be adopted as the 
basis of the goyernment measure, but his explanation of it, 
and the answers to a few questions put to him, showed his 
scheme to be so defective and so crude that reference to 
it could only perplex and mislead. It contained some 
startling clauses for lowering and extending the franchise 
beyond what was considered prudent, but hardly any dis- 
franchisement, all the nomination boroughs being allowed to 
retain at least one member.* I know not whether at this time 
he favoured the doctrine that the privilege of sending members 
to Parliament, once granted to a place, could not be taken 
away constitutionally, except on clear proof of corruption ; or 
thought that the small boroughs should be protected for the 
good service they had rendered to the Liberal side ever since 
the revolution of 1688 ; or felt that having himself sat in 
the House of Commons as the representative of a peer, till he 
had very recently been elected for Yorkshire, it would have 
been very ungracious to prevent others from entering the 
House of Commons by the same honourable means — but 
he has always shown a rooted antipathy to disfranchisement, 

* Mr. Pioebuck asserts, in his ' History of the "Whig Administration,' that 
on the 18th of November Brougham called a meeting of his House of Com- 
mons friends, and fully explained to them his measure — of which eight heads 
are given— making it very like Lord Grey's Bill. This statement I can most 
positively contradict. I was then one of Brougham's " House of Commons 
friends," and had sent in my adhesion to him as far as parliamentary reform 
was concerned, when ho gave his notice at the commencement of the Session ; 
and I am certain that he never called any such meeting of friends as is here 
supposed and that he never explained to me or to any of them the particulars 
of his plan ; on the contrary, he said he wished it to remain secret till ho 
detailed it in the House of Commons. On the 18th of November, he was 
entirely absorbed in the negotiation about the Great Seal, and so remained 
till he had obtained it. Both then, and during discussions which followed, 
Brougham's most intimate friends not in the Cabinet professed entire ignorance 
of the proposed enactments of his bill. 



384 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, and he subsequently threw out in the Lords bills passed by 
' the Commons to disfranchise Stafford, Warwick, and Sudbury, 



A.D. 1830. for corruption very clearly proved. 

Lord Durham, the member of the Cabinet most eager for 
a thorough reform, and particularly zealous against the rotten 
boroughs, was much alarmed by the views which the Chan- 
cellor disclosed, and suggested that the subject should be 
referred to a committee of the Cabinet. This being agreed to, 
he contrived that the Chancellor, on account of his multiplied 
engagements, should be excused from serving upon it. The 
members selected, who really acted, were Lord Althorp, 
Lord Durham, and Sir James Graham ; Lord John Kussell, 
although not then of the Cabinet, being associated with them. 
Brougham did not trouble himself further with the subject 
till the Committee, in the beginning of the new year, made 
their report, accompanying a draught of their proposed 
bill. On account of the importance and difficulty of the 
measure Ministers claimed ample time to prepare it, and both 
Houses stood adjourned from the 23rd of December to the 
3rd of February following. 
The Chan- Before the adjournment Brougham made no further demon- 
ceiior's first gtratiou iu the House of Lords, and confined himself to lavino^ 

attempts at . " 

legislation, two bills ou the table, one to take away the lien or hypothec 
which landlords have in Scotland on the produce of the 
land for the payment of rent, and the otlier for the estab- 
lishment of local courts to try small causes in England. 
The first turned out an inauspicious failure — for it raised 
such a tempest of opposition that the author was obliged to 
withdraw it before it had been read a second time. The 
other would have passed if the friendly feeling towards the 
Government still entertained by Lord Lyndhurst, now become 
Lyndhnrst Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, had continued. This 
iwoii of the j^idicial appointment was a contrivance of the Lord Chancellor, 
Exchequer, -yyljo entertained the vain liope that Lyndhurst, in considera- 
tion of this sop would steadily support the Whig Government. 
The rrcmier declared this to be a masterly move, and ^ls soon 
as Chief Baron Alexander could be prevailed upon to resign, 
the arrangement was completed. Lyndhurst had cautiously 



LIFE OF LOKD BEOUGHAM. 385 

avoided giving any pledge, or making use of any expression CHAP, 
which could be quoted as even a faint promise to adhere to ' 

the Whigs. Lord Grey, however, had asked him to carry a.d. 1830. 
the Eegency Bill through the Lords after the change of 
Government, and there seemed a very friendly understanding 
between them. But the new Chief Baron having been sworn 
in on the 18th of January, he immediately after gave the most 
unequivocal signs of a determination to lead the Opposition 
in the House of Lords, and as soon as possible to storm the 
Treasury Bench. 

The Chancellor, when adjourning his court on 24th 
December for the Christmas holidays, delivered a short 
address to the bar, in which he indulged pretty freely in 
self-laudation while reviewing his exploits since he had pre- 
sided there — and I must say, very excusably, although it might 
have been better if the task had been left to others. How- 
ever new to the situation and to the business in hand, he 
had, upon the whole, disposed very reputably of most of the 
cases which came before him ; and, notwithstanding some 
few mistakes and eccentricities which caused momentary 
mirth, he commanded the respect of the bar and of the 
public. It might have been feared that his judicial per- 
formance might resemble Jean Jacques Kousseau's musical 
performance in the concert given by that wonderful man 
before he had been initiated in the rudiments of music; 
but, on the contrary. Brougham's natural genius, assisted by 
slender cultivation, carried him through with eclat. He was 
by no means timid in offering an opinion upon points which 
were quite strange to him ; and when he found, by observing 
the faces of those who were listening, that he was quite 
wrong, instead of being abashed and submitting to any con- 
tinued triumph over him, he rallied in a most marvellous 
manner, and preserved his ascendancy after misadventures 
which would have ruined seven ordinary mortals. rH^habit 
which caused him the greatest peril was writing letters while 
he was sitting on the bench and supposed to be listening to 
arguments from the bar. He did not resort to the art of the 
wily Eldon, who, when writing letters in court to his private 

VOL. VIII. 2 c 



386 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, friends, folded the paper as if he had been taking notes of 
' the argument. Lord Chancellor Brougham, above all dis- 

A.D. 1831. guise, many times in the course of a morning would openly 
receive letters on the bench, read them, and write, seal and 
despatch answers, meanwhile listening to the counsel and 
asking them questions. 

This habit was particularly distasteful to that very petu- 
lant, though very learned and able counsel. Sir Edward 
Sugden (now Lord St. Leonards), who tried to correct it, 
but was unlucky in the occasion which he took and the 
method he employed for that purpose. As the most marked 
and effectual intimation of his displeasure, he suddenly 
stopped in the middle of a sentence while the Chancellor 
was writing. After a considerable pause the Chancellor, 
without raising his eyes from the paper, said, " Go on, Sir 
Edward ; I am listening to you." Sugden. — " I observe that 
your Lordship is engaged in writing, and not favouring me 
with your attention." Chancellor. — " I am signing papers of 
mere form. You may as well say that I am not to blow my 
nose or take snuff while you speak." Sir Edward sat down 
/ in a huff; but on this occasion he was laughed at, and the 
V Chancellor was applauded. 

^ The court being adjourned, Brougham, like a pious son 
(as he ever showed himself), took a journey to Brougham 
Hall, to visit his venerable mother, and, kneeling before 
her, to ask her blessing on a Lord Chancellor. The good old 
lady still preserved her fine faculties quite entire ; but, while 
she reciprocated her boy's affection for her, and was proud of 
his abilities and the distinction he had acquired, she said 
with excellent good sense and feeling, " My dear Harry, I 
would rather have embraced the member for Yorkshire ; but 
God Almighty bless you ! " 

Chauceiy When Parliament re-assembled, the Chancellor brought 

forward his scheme for reforming the Court of Chancery, 
thus humorously apologising for not taking further time to 
mature it : — 

" I, who have little or no experience, whoso knowledge of the 
practice of the Court must necessarily be limited — I, a mere 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 887 



V 

A.D. 18v31. 



novice in the law of tliat Court, nevertheless begin with attempt- CHAP, 
ing what others, to the very close of .'their career, have not 
attempted — a change, an innovation; and to sum up all in one 
expression so hateful, so alien to long-established habits, so sore, 
so agonising to the experienced practitioner, — in one hateful 
word, the head and front of my offending — A Chancery Eeform. 
Eeform, odious and reprobated in all places, is especially odious and 
especially reprobated there, when it appears as it were a monster, 
composed of two parts so utterly irreconcileable and incon- 
gruous as Chancery and Eeform. Short as my experience has 
been in that Court, I almost already begin to feel those diffi- 
culties and those incumbrances which have overpowered and 
mastered the good intentions of all my illustrious predecessors. 
I feel afraid that I am already, as it were, becoming attached to 
the soil ; I am already in the course of seduction ; I am getting 
involved in the integuments and entanglements which I have 
been describing as forming the excuse of those who succumbed. 
I, who came into the Court pouring out prayers for reform, am 
almost already incapacitated for attempting it. 

* Vix prece finita, torpor gravis alligat artus, 
Mollia cinguntur tenui prsBCordia libro : 
In frondem crines, in ramos brachia crescunt ; 
Pes, modo tarn velox pigris radicibus hseret, 
Ora cacumen obit ; remanet nitor unus in ilia.' 

*' I feel that I am on the point, if I delay but an instant, of 
fleeing altogether from the day, of becoming fixed and rooted in 
the ground ; and that I shall flourish only like the laurel in the 
fable, a monument of her escape from the embraces of the God of 
Light." * 

He then went on, at very great length, to propose the 
abolition of a vast number of sinecures in the Court of 
Chancery, and various improvements in its procedure ; but he 
did not touch the radical grievance — the system of Masters 
in Chancer!/, to whom every cause was referred after any 
point in it had been decided by the Equity Judge, with a 
power of appealing to him again and again upon every ques- 
tion of law or fact which the Master had decided ; so that 
the cause used to go to sleep for years in the Master's office, 
and the suitors being kept oscillating between the Master 
and the Equity Judge by a sort of ^erpetuum mobile, no suit 

* 2 Hansard, 850. 

2 C 2 



388 ' EEIGN 0^ WILLIAM IV. 

C^P. was ever terminated. But the time for such a change had 

' not yet arrived. Although the abolition of the Masters in 

A.D. 1831. Chancery was carried in little more than twenty years after, 

such a purpose at this time would have been considered as 

preposterous as a bill to abolish the satellites of Jupiter. 

Reform Bill The attention of both Houses of Parliament and of the 

launched. •iiiiii . a t^ -,. 

nation was soon entirely absorbed by the question of Parlia- 
mentary Eeform. The Committee of the Cabinet had re- 
commended a very sweeping scheme, entirely disfranchising 
a large number of boroughs, limiting the right of a great 
many others to one representative, creating a considerable 
number of new constituencies, extending the right of voting 
to copyholders and leaseholders in counties and to all house- 
holders in boroughs paying 151. a year rent, and introducing 
vote by ballot. The Chancellor was rather shocked to find 
the projected measure going so far beyond that which he 
himself had contemplated ; but, to avoid disunion, he con- 
sented to adopt the whole, except vote by ballot, to which 
he expressed an insuperable antipathy. Upon this point he 
was supported by Lord Grey and several other members of 
the Cabinet. Lord Durham and Sir James Graham long 
held out for the ballot, alleging that without it the measure 
would give no satisfaction. At last a compromise was en- 
tered into : the ballot was given up, and, by way of com- 
pensation, the town franchise was to be reduced from 15Z. 
to 101., wherebv several hundred thousand more voters 
would be created. The bill so framed the Chancellor agreed 
to, and very gallantly and with perfect good faith supported, 
although he several times in debate hinted that it was not 
entirely to his mind, that it was rather too sweeping, and that 
if its principle were adopted its details might be materially 
modified. 

The bill being launched in the House of Commons, while 
it was proceeding there almost daily discussions took place 
upon it in the House of Lords, brought on by the presenta- 
tion of petitions. In these the Chancellor bore the principal 
part, attacking with much violence the anti-reforming Lords. 
He was particularly sarcastic upon the poor Marquis of Lon- 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 389 

dondeny, who had exposed himself by several unfortunate CHAP, 
mistakes in his references to history. ' 



The victimised peer now sought revenge by bringing a.d. i83i. 
before the House a matter which had made a great noise The King's 
in the clubs and in the newspapers. The Lord Chancellor, i^J^t/ie Lord 
attended by his officers, driving in his coach from the Chancellor. 
Court of Chancery at Westminster to assist at the Queen's 
Drawing-room, when he reached the Horse Guards and 
wished to pass into St. James's Park, was stopped by the 
military stationed there, and told that orders had been given 
by the King to allow no carriage to be admitted, except that 
of the Speaker of the House of Commons. NeA^ertheless, the 
Chancellor's coachman whipped his horses and the carriage 
passed through, the military giving way on both sides. 

A few days after, the Marquis of Londonderry, in pur- 
suance of a notice he had given, rose to put certain questions 
on the subject to the Commander-in-Chief. He said : — 

^' Their Lordships must see how necessary it was that military 
orders should be upheld, and that no individual, however high 
his station, should be permitted to contravene them; and he 
was sure that when it was alleged that the first law officer of 
the countiy had defied that authority, some explanation was due. 
The Lord Chancellor had been charged with breaking through the 
King's Guard on the day of the last drawing-room. There might 
be some exaggeration ; and in order that their Lordships might be 
in possession of the facts, he would ask his noble and gallant 
friend three questions. First, Whether the King's Guard bad been 
forced by the Lord Chancellor? Secondly, Whether this arose from 
mistake or from a misconception of the orders given to the Guard? 
Thirdl}', Whether the officer whose Guard was forced had been put 
under arrest, or liad satisfactorily explained his conduct ?" 

Lord Hill, the Commander-in-Chief, said that, after the 
fullest investigation, he came to the conclusion that the officer 
was not to blame, and that the soldiers under him had done 
their duty ; and he was quite satisfied, from his communi- 
cation with the noblo and learned lord himself, that he had 
no idea whatever of forcing the Guard. 

*' Lord Chancellor. — I can assure your Lordships that no one 
in the world thinks less of the state and pomp of the office which 



390 REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP. I liold than I do. The observances of that state and pomp are to 
' me certainly the most irksome and the most oppressive parts of 



A D 1831 ^-^ piiblic duty ; and it was not from any foolish wish of passing 
through the Horse Guards, instead of going round by Piccadilly 
and down Constitution Hill, that I ordered my carriage to the 
Horse Guards. I had been detained late in the House of Lords 
to determine an appeal of great urgency, and I had only time 
by the shortest route to pay my duty to their Majesties. When 
suddenly stopped by my horses* reins being seized, I thought 
there must be some mistake, which was strengthened by the 
remark of the officer, that it was only the Speaker of the House 
of Commons who had permission to pass, as I could not imagine 
that the same privilege should not be extended to the Speaker of 
the Upper House. The officer, however, having satisfied me 
that there was no mistake, and that his orders were peremptory, I 
said, ' Then I must turn back.' But I suppose the footman had 
not communicated to the coachman the order to tui'n back. I 
certainly was never more surprised in my life than when I found 
that my coachman had taken me through, and I was in St. 
James's Park before I could pull the check-string. I certainly 
then thought that it would have been ridiculous to have turned 
back as the mischief had been done by the mistaken zeal of my 
coachman, who had acted on his former orders, to make as much 
haste as possible. In conversation, to save the man, I have taken 
the whole blame upon myself; but I can assure your Lordships 
that I am the last person to furnish an example of setting military 
discipline at defiance, and that I was far from entertaining the 
idea of forcing the King's Guard. I do not well see how I could 
have accomplished this exploit single-handed, even with the aid 
of the mace and the purse. Nothing could be further from my 
intentions than to sanction any breach of the orders of his late 
or his present Majesty." * 

King William IV., who thought that this was little short 
of a " levying of war," publicly professed himself satisfied 
with the Chancellor's explanation ; but privately expressed 
a doubt whether the order given to the coachman, when he 
whipped his horses, had not been "Forward!" And ever 
after, when anything occurred to alarm him by Lord Chan- 
cellor Brougham*s vagaries, this incident oi forcing the Guard 
came back to his recollection. For a while it made a great 
sensation, and was the subject of many songs and caricatures. 

* 3 Ilansarcl, 493. 



LIFE OF LOKD BROUGHAM. 391 

The ' Times ' had an elaborate leader upon it, supposed to CHAP, 
smack of the Chancellor's own touch, and saying that " the ' 



coachman had done it all." But as yet there was a close a.d. 1831. 
fraternity between him and Barnes, the editor ; insomuch 
that this journal, which was hereafter to vilify him griev- 
ously, swarmed with puffs on Lord Brougham so gross that 
he could not have penned them himself: extolling to the 
skies his genius, his acquirements, and his Herculean appli- 
cation to all his labours.* And, such was the effect of 
iteration, that before he had said a word in Parliament upon 
the bill, Eeformers deemed him the hope of the nation. 
County meetings, and other popular assemblies, passed reso- 
lutions expressing their confidence in him ; and several 
corporations, as prepayment for his services, voted him their 
freedom. On receiving this honour from the citizens of York, 
to increase their enthusiasm he already expressed his regret 
that he had accepted the Great Seal and was no longer their 
servant. 

The grand crisis of the Reform Bill was now at hand. Sudden dis- 
Although popular with the nation, it was distasteful to the parliament. 
existing House of Commons. If the votes upon it had been 
taken by ballot, it would have been rejected by an immense 
majority ; and, with all the terrors of open voting before 
the eyes of members, they passed the second reading by a 
majority of one only. Subsequently, on General Gascoigne's loth April. 
motion against reducing the number of representatives for 
England, they plainly showed a determination to mutilate 
the bill; and, with small majorities in favour of any part 
of it in the Lower House, there seemed a certainty that it 
would be at once crushed by the Lords. The following 
evening a very hostile disposition to the Government was 20th April. 
shown in a committee on the Ordnance Estimates, and what 
was done was said to amount to a stopping! of the supplies. 

The following day a Cabinet was held, and a resolution o^gj. .^j^,.;!^ 
was unanimously passed to advise the King immediately to 
dissolve the Parliament. At the rising of the Cabinet this 
resolution was communicated by Lord Grey and the Lord 

* E.g. " rarliamentary Reform is safe from tlic gigantic powers of its 
clj.".mpiou oil tlie woolsack." — ' Times,' Ut February, 1831. 



392 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP. Chancellor to his Majesty, who very readily assented to it ; 
' and the usual orders were given in the usual manner for the 
A.D. 1831. ceremony of a prorogation to take place next day. 

Yet, to shake all faith even in contemporary history? 
within twenty years from the event a publication appeared, 
professing to be a * History of the Whig Administration ; 
by John Arthur Koebuck, Esq., M.P. for Sheffield.' This 
gentleman was a particularly intimate private friend of 
Lord Brougham, and professed that he obtained from Lord 
Brougham authentic information of all the secret proceed- 
ings of the Government while Lord Brougham remained in 
office. The author gives a totally different account of the 
interview between the King and his two Ministers ;* yet, with 
such claims to authenticity, it is utterly fabulous.t 
Fabulous Mr. Koebuck's narration being every way so closely con- 

uponTord nccted with the subject of this memoir, I copy it in extenso, 
Brougham's ^nd it wiU at all events amuse the reader, althouo^h I fear 

authority of . i i -t i • i i 

his having that it violatcs probability too much to be considered ar- 

Z^^ tisticallygood:- 

loyalty. u On the morning of the 22nd, Lord Grey and the Lord Chan- 

cellor waited on the King in order to request that he would instantly 
and on that day dissolve the House. The whole scene of this inter- 
view of the King and his Ministers, as related by those who 
could alone describe it, is a curious illustration of the way in 
which the great interests of mankind often seem to depend on 
petty incidents, and in which ludicrous puerilities often mix 
themselves up with events most important to the welfare of 
whole nations. The necessity of a dissolution had long been 
foreseen and decided on by the Ministers, but the King had not 
yet been persuaded to consent to so bold a measure ; and now the 
two chiefs of the administration were about to intrude themselves 
into the royal closet, not only to advise and ask for a dissolution, 
but to request the King on the sudden, on this very day, and 



* Vol. ii. 148. 

f See 'Correspondence of the late Enrl Grey with King William IV.,' 
published in 18(J7, where it appears that the King had given his consent to a 
dissolution, in a letter to Lord Grey early on the 21st of April ; and the subse- 
quent interview of Lord Grey and the Chancellor with the King on the 22nd, 
before the Council met at 12 o'clock, was to retpiest the King to prorogue 
Parliament in person, which ho at once agreed to do. — Ed. 



A.D. 1831. 



LIFE OF LOKD BKOUGHAM. 393 

within a few hours, to go down and put an end to his Parliament CHAP, 
in the midst of the session, and with all the ordinary business of 
the session yet unfinished. The bolder mind of the Lord Chan- 
cellor took the lead, and Lord Grey anxiously solicited him to 
manage the ELing on the occasion. So soon as they were admitted 
the Chancellor, with some care and circumlocution, propounded 
to the King the object of the interview they had sought. The 
startled monarch no sooner understood the drift of the Chan- 
cellor's somewhat paraphrastic statement, than he exclaimed in 
wonder and anger against the very idea of such a proceeding. 
' How is it possible, my Lords, that I can after this fashion repay 
the kindness of Parliament to the Queen and myself? They have 
granted me a most liberal civil list, and to the Queen a splendid 
annuity in case she survives me.* The Chancellor confessed that 
they had, as regarded his Majesty, been a liberal and wise Parlia- 
ment, but said that, nevertheless, their further existence was in- 
compatible with the peace and safety of the kingdom. Both he and 
Lord Grey then strenuously insisted upon the absolute necessity 
of their request, and gave his Majesty to understand that this 
advice was by his Ministers unanimously resolved on, and that 
they felt themselves unable to conduct the affairs of the country 
in the present condition of the Parliament. This last statement 
made the King feel that a general resignation would be the con- 
sequence of a further refusal ; of this, in spite of his secret 
wishes, he was at the moment really afraid ; and therefore he, 
by employing petty excuses, and suggesting small and temporary 
difficulties, soon began to show that he was about to yield. 
' But, my Lords, nothing is prepared ; the great officers of State 
are not summoned.* 'Pardon me. Sir,' said the Chancellor, 
bowing with profound apparent humility, * we have taken the 
great liberty of giving them to understand that your Majesty 
commanded their attendance at the proper hour.' ' But, my 
Lords, the cro\vn and the robes, and other things needed, are not 
prepared.' ' Again I most humbly entreat your Majesty's pardon 
for my boldness,' said the Chancellor, ' they are all prepared and 
ready, the proper officers being desired to attend in proper form 
and time.' ' But, my Lords,' said the King, reiterating the form 
in which ho put his objection, ' you know the thing is wholly 
impossible; the guards, the troops, have had no orders, and 
cannot be ready in time.' This objection was in reality the 
most formidable one. The orders to the troops on such occasions 
emanate always directly from the King, and no person but the 
King can in tnith command them for such service ; and as the 



394 REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP. Prime Minister and darino; Chancellor well knew tlie nature of 



' royal susceptibility on such matters, they were in no small 
. ^ 10Q1 de2:ree doubtful and anxious as to the result. The Chancellor 
therefore, with some real hesitation, began as before : ' Pardon 
me. Sir ; we know how bold the step is, that, presuming on 
your goodness and your anxious desire for the safety of your 
kingdom and happiness of your people, we have presumed to 
take — I have given orders, and the troops are ready.' The King 
started in serious anger, flamed red in the face, and burst forth 
with ' What, my Lords, have you dared to act thus ? Such a 
thing was never heard of. You, my Lord Chancellor, ought to 
know that such an act is treason, high treason, my Lord.' ' Yes, 
Sir,' said the Chancellor, 'I do know it; and nothing but my 
thorough knowledge of your Majesty's goodness, of your paternal 
anxiety for the good of your people, and my own solemn belief 
that the safety of the State depends upon this day's proceedings, 
could have emboldened me to the performance of so unusual, and, 
in ordinary circumstances, so improper a proceeding. In all 
humility I submit myself to your Majesty, and am ready in my 
own person to bear all the blame, and receive all the punishment 
which your Majesty may deem needful ; but I again entreat your 
Majesty to listen to us and to follow our counsel ; and as you 
value the security of your crown and the peace of your realms, 
yield to our most earnest solicitations.' After some further 
expostulations by both his Ministers, the King cooled down and 
consented. Having consented, he became anxious that every- 
thing should be done in the proper manner, and gave minute 
directions respecting the ceremonial. The speech to be spoken 
by him at the prorogation was ready prepared, and in the Chan- 
cellor's pocket. To this he agreed ; desired that eveiybody might 
punctually attend, and dismissed his Ministers for the moment 
with something between a menace and a joke, upon the audacity 
of their proceeding." 

The King's Although the King subsequently became very much alarmed 
ceritVand ^J ^^® " Reform mania " which burst out upon the dissolution 
zeal in the of Parliament, and he then took a keen dislike to the measure 
form. ' ' and to the Ministers who introduced it, at this time he was a 
hearty reformer, and he enjoyed much tlie popularity which 
this character conferred upon him. In truth, he was chagrined 
by the opposition to the bill which had sprung up in the 
Commons, — being tlion persuaded that it arose from a combi- 
nation of borough-mongers, who wished to control the Crown 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 395 

and to centre all power in an odious oligarchy. He therefore CHAP, 
sincerely approved of an appeal to the people. It was reported ' 



that there being some delay in the arrival of the royal carriage a.d. 183i. 
with the eight cream-coloured horses to carry him to West- 
minster, he exclaimed, " Never mind ; I am ready to go in a 
hackney-coach." This, though much less improbable, I dare 
say is not more true than that the Chancellor, before the King 
had been consulted about a prorogation, had ordered the 
great officers of State, the crown, the royal robes, and the 
military, to be in readiness for the ceremonial at a given 
hour. But, after diligent inquiry, I can take upon myself to 
say, that all who had an opportunity of knowing or ascertaining 
the fact, with the exception of Lord Brougham's jproUge, concur 
in testifying that his Majesty, instead of being constrained 
upon this occasion, most joyously adopted the advice which 
was tendered to him. 

The prorogation scene, which I myself witnessed, strongly April 22nd. 
corroborates this suj)position. It greatly resembled the termi- Part acted 
nation of some of the refractory Parliaments in the reign of chancellor 
Charles I., — when the Gentleman Usher of the black rod, '^ ^^^ P^'°' 

ro2;atioa 

coming to summon the Commons, was harred out, tumultuary scene. 
resolutions were moved, and at last the Sovereign addressed 
the representatives of the people in the tone of a Judge 
passing sentence of death on a criminal. 

As the Earl of Mansfield had given notice for this day of a 
hostile motion concerning the Keform Bill, the Chancellor 
manoeuvred to deprive him of the opportunity of bringing it 
forward. He continued hearing an appeal till a late hour, 
and then withdrew, not meaning to return till he should enter 
in the procession with the King. But, as soon as he was gone, 
Lord Mansfield, acr-ording to the privilege of the Peers, moved 
that the Earl of Shaftesbury should take the chair as Speaker 
— which was done immediately. Lord Wharnclifife then rose 
to move an address to the King, praying that he would not 
dissolve the present Parliament. He was interrupted by 
ministerialists, and at least five Peers were on their legs at 
one time trying to gain a hearing, and looking as if resolved 
to come to blows. At last Lord Wharncliffe was permitted 
to make his motion, and there seemed great danger that it 



396 REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, might be carried by acclamation, when Lord Shaftesbury was 
' dislodged from the woolsack by the appearance of the Lord 
A.D. 1831. Chancellor in a state of great distraction, and screaming out 
in the most passionate tone of voice : — 

" ' I never yet heard that the Crown ought not to dissolve Par- 
liament whenever it thought fit, particularly at a moment when 
the House of Commons had resorted to the extreme step of 
refusing the supplies." 

There were loud cries of ^' Hear, hear. Tlie King, the King ! " 
and (according to Hansard) " altogether immense confusion." 

The Lord Chancellor thought he had effectually prevented 
any further attempt at discussion, and again withdrew. But 
no sooner was he gone than Lord Shaftesbury was again 
placed on the woolsack, and Lord Mansfield was declaiming 
furiously against the dissolution and against the Reform Bill, 
when cries were heard of " The King ! The King ! God save 
the King ! " At that instant the large doors were thrown 
open on the right of the throne, and his Majesty, accom- 
panied by the Chancellor and other great officers, entered the 
House with a firm though rather hasty stejD, and having seated 
himself on the throne, looked round to the quarter from which 
the disturbance had come with evident signs of anger. The 
Commons were then summoned, and when they had arrived 
his Majesty began : " My Lords and Gentlemen, I have come 
to meet you for the purpose of proroguing the Parliament, 
with a view to its immediate dissolution " — pronouncing the 
word with deep emphasis and evident exultation.* We do 
not follow the fashion of the French, who on these occasions 
holloa out " Vive leRoi!'' or " Vive VEm^pereurV (as it may 
be) while his French Majesty is still sitting on his throne ; 
but when our Sailor King was returning to his Palace he was 
saluted with loud cries of " Well done, old boy ! — sarved them 
right ! Three cheers for the King and Reform. Hip, hip, 
hurra ! " And he seemed much delighted with the applause 
which he received. 

The dissolution was attended with the most splendid success. 
At the elections the anti-reformers were scattered like chaff 

* 3 Hansard, 1810. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 397 

before the wind, and an overwhelming majority was returned CHAP, 
to the House of Commons for " the bill, the whole bill, and ' 



nothing but the bill." a.d. 183i. 

Still the Lords resolutely stood up in opposition, and at The Lord 
the opening of the new session the Lord Chancellor was ^|jX^ti°n^ 
severely called to account for his conduct on the day of the 
prorogation. After appealing to his general character and 
the uniform respect and courtesy with which he had ever 
treated the House and every individual member of it, he came 
to the particular charge : — 

" It has been asserted, my Lords, that I threw my hat on the 
woolsack and flounced ont of the House in an unbecoming 
manner, at a time when I knew that the King was not nearer to 
the House than the Horse Guards. I did not leave the House, 
however, until I received a positive order from the King, com- 
municated to me by the Gentleman Usher of the Black Kod, in 
these words : * The King doth command the Lord Chancellor instantly 
to give his attendance upon his Majesty, who waits at the bottom of the 
staircase.' The person who had a right to be offended T\dth me 
on that occasion was the Gentleman Usher of the Black Eod; 
and he, finding me slow to obey his summons, pulled me, with 
his usual courtesy, by the sleeve, and added, ' Did you hear what 
I said ? The King has arrived, and is at the bottom of the stair- 
case.' So far from the King being then at the Horse Guards, I 
can assure your Lordships that upon this remonstrance I went as 
fast as I could to the bottom of the staircase, and found his 
Majesty there waiting for me. I hope it is perfectly unnecessary 
for me to assure your Lordships that I would not have quitted 
my post in this House upon any fictitious pretence whatever. It 
might have been impar congressus, but I would rather have stayed 
and broken a lance with the noble Earl if imperative duty had 
not called me away." * 

The bill now proceeded through aU its stages in the House 7th October. 
of Commons, supported by steady majorities. On the fifth 
night of tlie debate, on the second reading in the House of 
Lords, Brougliam delivered his great speech in defence of it, ^'"'f'^ ^" 
which by many was considered his chef-d'oeuvre. It certainly cond reading 
was a wonderful performance to witness. He showed a most Lm^iiin" 
stupendous memory and extraordinary dexterity in handling 

* 4 Hansard, 153. 



Lord 

Biougham's 

celebrated 



398 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, the weapons both of ridicule and of reason. Without a note 
' to refer to he went through all the speeches of his opponents 



.D. 1831. delivered during the five nights' debate, analysing them suc- 
cessively, and, with a little aid from perversion, giving them 
all a seemingly triumphant answer. But in looking through 
the printed speech, as reported by himself, I find great diflS- 
culty in selecting any passages which would give any idea of 
its excellence ; and I must confine myself to the peroration. 
This was partly inspired by draughts of mulled port imbibed 
by him very copiously towards the conclusion of the four 
hours during which he was on his legs or on his knees : — • 

"Among the awful considerations that now bow down my 
mind, there is one which stands pre-eminent above the rest. 
You are the highest judicature in the realm ; you sit here as 
judges, and decide all causes, civil and criminal, without appeal. 
It is a judge's first duty never to pronounce sentence, in the most 
trifling case, without hearing. Will you make this the excep- 
tion ? Are you really prepared to determine, but not to hear, 
the mighty cause upon which a nation's hopes and fears hang ? 
You are. Then beware of your decision ! Kouse not, I beseech 
you, a peace-loving, but a resolute people; do not alienate from 
your body the affections of a whole empire. As your friend, as 
the friend of my order, as the friend of my country, as the 
faithful servant of my sovereign, I counsel you to assist with 
your uttermost efforts in preserving the peace, and upholding 
and perpetuating the constitution. Therefore I pray and I exhort 
you not to reject this measure. By all you hold most dear — by 
all the ties that bind every one of us to our common order and 
our common country, I solemnly adjure you — I warn you — I 
implore 3^ou — yea, on my bended knees (he hieels), I supplicate 
you — reject not this bill ! " * 

He continued for some time as if in prayer ; but his friends, 
alarmed for him lest he should be suffering from the effects 
of the mulled port, picked him up and placed him safely on 
the Avoolsack. ' 

Like Burke's famous dagger scene in the House of Com- 
mons, this prostration was a failure. So unsuited was it to 
the spectators and to the actor, that it produced a sensation 
of ridicule, and considerably impaired the eflect of a speech 

* Lord Brougham's Speeches, vol. ii. p. G29-G30. 



LIFE OF LOED BKOUGHAM. 399 

displaying wonderful powers of memory and of intellect, CHAP, 
although hardly deserving the epithets bestowed upon it by ' 



the * Times' — " overpowering, matchless, and immortal." a.d. i83i. 

Lord Lyndhurst answered the Chancellor with great 
ability ; but, to neutralise his panegyric on Schedule A, by 
which so many boroughs were disfranchised, he very unfaudy 
quoted a letter on Keform, written by Brougham in 1810, in 
which he deprecated disfranchisement, declaring that " healing 
is better than amputation." In explanation, the Chancellor 
said that the letter had been stolen from him by a servant and 
improperly published, and that he had that very day granted 
an injunction against its farther publicatioa AYith candour 
and dignity he admitted " a change in his opinions " on this 
subject. 

The injunction caused the letter to be published in all the 
newspapers in the kingdom. In truth, the writer had no 
reason to be ashamed of it. Soberly it advocates reform, but 
preaches moderation, preserving the tone of the ^Edinburgh 
Eeview * upon the subject, — then considered the exponent of 
orthodox Whig doctrine. 

Notwithstanding the Chancellor's prayer and his '^ over- 
powering, matchless, and immortal speech," at half-past six in 
the morning the bill was rejected by a majority of forty-one 
Peers. 

The country now seemed to be on the eve of a revolution. Qi^estion as 
The people and one House of Parliament representing them tion of peers 
were resolutely determined to have reform ; the other House Reform^g^if 
of Parliament had shown a fixed resolution to resist it, and 
the King, now heartily repenting that he had ever en- 
couraged it, wished most earnestly that he might hear of 
it no more. 

The Whig leaders felt that they could not possibly remain 
in oiBfice without again bringing forward the measure, and 
they sincerely and patriotically felt that no efficient Govern- 
ment could be formed by their adversaries on anti-reform 
principles. Therefore, instead of resigning, they came to 
the resolution tliat it was their duty still to try to carry the 
measure by the aid of the King, however plainly ho miglit 
now show hLs dislike to it, and Brougham, with his usual 



400 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 



A.D. 1831. 



His attack 
on Lord 
Wynford. 



14th July, 
1830. 



boldness, proposed that they should ask him to consent to the 
creation of the requisite number of Peers for accomplishing 
the object in view. This was allowed to be an unconstitutional 
proceeding, a sort of cou]^ d'etat, a disguised revolution ; 
but a hope was expressed that the power to do the deed would 
be sufficient, without the deed being actually done — and that 
at all events public convulsion and civil war might thus be 
avoided. The King at first declared that the proposal was to 
rob him of a great prerogative for the purpose of employing 
it against the Crown ; but when he was told that his present 
servants must all resign unless his Majesty should be gra- 
ciously pleased to take their advice upon this point, and that 
they all conscientiously and strongly believed that the advice 
was, under the present unprecedented circumstances, for the 
honour of the Crown and the benefit of the people, he said 
he could hold out no longer, and gave them to understand 
that, if necessary, he was ready to agree to the creation of 
Peers to carry the Keform Bill, but did not give any absolute 
pledge, and did not sign anything on paper, upon the subject. 
Upon this verbal understanding Parliament was prorogued 
with an intimation from the Throne that the subject of 
Keform would speedily be again brought forward. 

Although during the late Session of Parliament Keform 
absorbed all attention, there was a bill introduced by the 
Chancellor which deserves to be noticed, as showing the reck- 
less manner in which he proceeded, with the view of mortify- 
ing and degrading a political opponent. Lord Wynford, 
late Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, had been entrusted 
to preside in the House of Lords on the hearing of Scotch 
Appeals, and had, in a case, McGavin v. Stewart, rightly 
enough reversed a decree of the Court of Session, and ordered 
a new trial, but inadvertently had directed that the second 
trial should be before a Special Jury, and that on this occa- 
sion hoth loarties should he examined viva voce. Unfortunately 
special juries were then unknown in Scotland, and both 
parties were dead. Subsequently, Brougham holding the 
Great Seal, Lord Wynford had given him much ojffence, not 
only by opposing tlic Keform Bill but by petulantly object- 
ing to all the measures of the Government. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. '401 

To be revenged, my Lord Chancellor one evening, shortly CHAP, 
before the prorogation, laid on the table " A Bill to reverse ' 

the Judgment of the House of Lords on the Appeal of McGavin a.d. 183 i. 

V. Stewart," saying : — iithOct. 

" The judgment, my Lords, is utterly inconsistent with the 
law of Scotland. It must have been pronounced by some of your 
Lordships unacquainted with Scotch law. The natural conse- 
quence is that it is contrary to that law. The thing must have 
arisen in the pressure of business — owing to that ino])ia consilii 
which you have had to lament in this House. The judgment was 
pronounced some months before I had the honour of a seat here. 
I shall move that the Standing Orders be suspended, as it is very 
desirable that the bill should pass without delay." 

The bill was accordingly read a first time, and an article 
appeared in the * Times ' next morning showing " how the 
Chancellor had been compelled to do all this, and that 
the defaulting Appellate Judge was Lord Wynford." But 
the impropriety of the proceeding was so great, and it caused 
such an outcry among considerate persons, that on the day 
fixed for the second reading of the bill and carrying it 
through all its other stages, the Chancellor said '' he found 
that no material inconvenience would arise from postponing 
it." Lord Wynford denied that the judgment was wrong. 
Lord Lyndhurst, Chief Baron, was of opinion that "it was 
quite right ; but that at all events this House, like any other 
Court, miglit amend its own judgments." Lord Chancellor : 
" That power only belongs to inferior Courts, and the most 
serious consequences would follow if it were assumed by this 
the Court of dernier ressort" 

In truth, a power of reversing its judgments after they 
have been solemnly recorded does not belong to any Court, 
higli or low ; and a solemn judgment of the House of Lords, 
after the termination of the Session in which it has been 
pronounced, could only be reversed by Act of Parliament. 
But the judgment in question was right in point of law, and 
required no reversal, but a mere correction of what might be 
considered a misprision, or clerical mistake. Accordingly it 
was rectified by omitting the word special and the direction 
as to the examination of the parties, and the bill for reversing 

VOL. VIII. 2 D 



402 KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, it was withdrawn amidst symptoms of a universal opinion 

' that it ought never to have been presented. However, the 

A.D. 1831. Chancellor, though feeling some annoyance at the moment, 

very soon got over it, and was able to exercise a complete 

ascendancy over Lord Wynford. 

I ought now to mention that during the whole period 
when the Eeform Bill seemed entirely to absorb the attention 
of mankind, and the Lord Chancellor's share in it seemed 
occupation enough for the most vigorous mind, he was de- 
voting himself to his judicial duties with an assiduity and 
perseverance hardly ever manifested by Judges who did not 
mix in politics and thought of nothing but their cause papers. 
He sat later into the autumn, and later into the night, than 
had ever been before known, notwithstanding the remon- 
strances of counsel, solicitors, and officers of the Court. 

From the address which he delivered on takinsr leave of 
the bar for the long vacation, his head seems actually 
to have been turned by the whirl of violent excitement in 
which he lived. I cannot suspect him of wilfully misstating 
the truth, or of proposing to do what he himself knew to be 
impossible. Yet he did make statements entirely at variance 
with fact, and he promised a feat as difficult for him as to 
jump into a pint bottle. Although Sii' John Leach, one of 
the most expeditious Judges who ever sat, was then Master 
of the Kolls, and Sir Lancelot Shadwell filled the office of 
Vice-Chancellor (necessarily created for the assistance of the 
Lord Chancellor), and, though not a profound lawyer, was 
well acquainted with the routine of Chancery business and 
despatched it very rapidly, and the Lord Chancellor himself 
had worked very hard and got through a long list of appeals ; 
in point of fact, there were large arrears in the Court of 
Chancery still remaining to be wiped off; and instead of the 
Chancellor doing the whole of his own work and the Vice- 
Chancellor's too, it was ere long found necessary to create 
two new and additional Vice-Chancellors. Yet thus spoke 
Lord Chancellor Brougham on the 2nd day of September, 
A.D. 1831, before an immense audience, many of whom he 
might have been aware perfectly well knew the accuracy or in- 
accuracy, the reasonableness or the folly, of what he uttered : — 



LIFE OF LOED BKOUGHAM. 403 

It is a great satisfaction to me, in taking my leave of tlie CHAP. 



bar and of the suitors, to Imow that I have been able to dispose 
of all the arrears of the business of this Court, and that there are 
no appeals undisposed of, no petitions unanswered, and no causes 
unheard except such as are not ready, and which have been put 
upon the files of the Court subsequent to last June. It is a very 
great relief to the Court ; it will be a very great relief to the bar ; 
it will be a very great relief to all professional men ; above all, it 
will be a very great relief to the suitors to feel that the}^ shall have 
their business henceforward regularly going on, not encumbered by 
arrears, and not have their minds oppressed with the harassing 
prospect of never getting through their business. In the course 
of next teiTQ the benefit of this will be perceived, and it will be 
allowed that our time has been well spent. It has pressed hard 
on the Court, but I have been willing to bear that pressure, 
knowing well that the public will feel the full benefit of the more 
than ordinar}^ exertions that have been made. It was said by a 
great man, the most illustrious of all my predecessors, that he 
allowed the pressure of business upon him to be more than he 
could bear ; to which he replied ' the duties of life are more than 
life ' — memorable words, to be had in everlasting remembrance 
by all men who serve their country. ... I beg to add that 
I have now the most sanguine hopes of being able for the future 
to relieve his Honour the yice-Chancellor from hearing the 
greater part of the causes which have been, since the year 1813, 
ordinarily heard in his Court. . . . When I came into the 
Court I found that every cause which was of great importance in 
point of value, or of difficulty in point of law or of fact, and 
which in the first instance came before their Honours the Master 
of the Rolls and the Vice-Chancellor, almost inevitably found its 
way here by appeal, and generally, certainly in the majority of 
cases, onl}^ led to great expense, great delay, and great inconve- 
nience, whether there should be an ultimate affirmance or re- 
versal of the decree pronounced in the first instance. I proposed, 
therefore, that all such cases of difficulty and importance in 
point of value, or from the law as applying to them, should be at 
once transferred here and heard by me, as thereby the, otherwise 
inevitable, appeal would be avoided. The event has justified my 
prospective conjecture, and leads me now to form the plan which 
I shall certainly adopt, namely, that of transferring at once the 

bulk of that business into this Court I admit that 

though I have sat only two days later than Lord Eldon ever did, 
yet I have sat many more hours in the course of the day ; and I 
am aware of the embarrassments and inconveniences which this 

2 D 2 



V. 



A.D. 1831. 



A.D. 1831. 



404 EEIGN OF WILLIAM lY. 

CHAP, may have caused. I am not, however, aware that its tendency 
has been to abridge arguments in any case ; for I am sure I have 
endeavoured to show as much patience as any man could possess, 
that I might not indicate the slightest indisposition to hear the 
longest argument. Even where I have thought argument super- 
fluous, I have hardly ever stopped the reply in cases where I have 
been in favour of the side on which the reply was to be made ; 
and still more rarely have I disposed of cases on hearing one side 
only. I therefore cannot charge myself with having got rid of 
this arrear, and accomplishing this dispatch, at the expense of 
curtailing the hearing of causes." 

Although the judicious grieved, I have been told that the 
great mass of by-standers who heard this address were thrown 
into such transports of enthusiasm by it that they could 
scarcely be restrained from violating the decorum of the 
place by loudly applauding the Judge, aud when it was read 
in the daily newspapers, the public really believed that a 
new era had arrived, and that, as far as the administration of 
justice was concerned, there was now to be a golden age. 

" The Chancellor is determined," said the ' Times ' " that nothing 
of a personal nature shall interfere with the discharge of his 
public duty. He has cleared the Court of Chancerj^ He is 
resolved to do the same with the judicial proceedings of the 
House of Lords by sitting seven hours each day. No one but 
himself would have ventured on the task. Eelaxation he will 
have none. His carping assailants ought to know how immea- 
surably he is above their reach." 

8th Sept. The Coronation of William IV. now took place, and afforded 

ceiTor auiie ^^ excellent test of the popularity of the respective members 
Coronation, of the peerage. As they came successively, according to 
their precedence, to pay homage to the crowned Sovereign 
seated on his throne in Westminster Abbey before the as- 
sembled nation, silence prevailed, or plaudits, according to 
the general opinion of the merits and services of each par- 
ticular Peer. '' Lord Brougham, at the Coronation, received 
every testimony of the warmest and most eager approbation." 
So said the ' Times ' — and (on this occasion) truly. Having been 
present myself as a member of the House of Commons, I can 
testify that when the Lord Chancellor, the first of the lay 
Peers after the Hoyal Dukes, presented liimself on the steps 



of Lords. 



LIFE OF LOED BKOUGHAM. 405 

of the throne, knelt and went through the antique ceremony CHAP, 
of doing homage to his liege lord, the plaudits were so loud ' 

and general as not only to make the vaulted roofs of the a.d. i83L 
sacred edifice to resound, but almost to shake its massive 
walls. Sad example of the fleeting nature of popular ap- 
plause! — but instructive lesson as to the arts by which 
popular applause should be sought ! 

After a short recess a new Eeform Bill, with some 
alterations, but no improvements, was introduced into the 
Commons, and passed that House with comparatively little 
opposition. 

AYhen brought up to the Lords there was a firm purpose a.d. is32. 
entertained by a decided majority that it should not finally 26thMarch. 
pass, but a certain section of their Lordships who were irre- JefoJ^glli 
concileably adverse to it, influenced partly by the odium in the House 
they had incurred from the hasty step of throwing out the 
former bill on the second reading, and partly by the vague 
rumour of a contemplated creation of Peers upon a similar 
occurrence, determined to reserve themselves for the com- 
mittee, and then and there to wreak their vengeance by 
tearing every clause of it into shreds. Still so large was the 
number of those who thought any seeming concession treason, 
that the second reading was considered doubtful, and the 
Chancellor was again obliged to put forth his strength. On 
this occasion, however, he reasoned more soberly, and the 
kneeling scene was entirely omitted. He concluded by thus 
forcibly meeting the observation that the anxiety of the 
people as to the success of the bill had subsided : — 

" Do not, my Lords, let any man among you deceive himself 
with this belief. I tell you that the anxiety of the people has not 
gone by, that it exists as strongly and as intensely as ever, with 
this only difference, that it has stood the test of disappointment 
and long delay — of the hope deferred that maketh the heart sick, 
liely on it that from one end of this land to the other, the people 
— the intelligent, the thinking, the rational, the honest people — 
not merely of this metropolis, but of every town, village, and 
hamlet in England, and, if possible, still more in Scotland— hang 
\vith breathless suspense upon your decision this night. I hope, 
I confidently believe, indeed I expect with certainty, that the 
decision will diffuse universal joy throughout the empire ; that it 



406 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 



A.D. 183' 



Great blun- 
der com- 
mitted by 
LordLyni!- 
hurst. 



Resignation 
of the Whig 
Ministers. 



will terminate tlie painful suspense with, wliicli this bill has been 
so long regarded, and above all, that it will greatly increase 
towards your Lordships the affections of your fellow-citizens."* 

The second reading was carried by a majority of nine, f 
I have explained in my 'Life of Lyndhurst'J how that 
unscrupulous chief might now easily have won a victory 
for the anti-reforming Peers by moving in the Committee 
amendments which would not have given the Whig leaders 
plausible grounds for throwing up their offices and appealing 
from the King to the people, but which would have so 
damaged the bill that the Whig leaders could not have 
agreed to them without being liable to the charge of pusilla- 
nimity and tergiversation. Brougham has often told me 
with glee the fatal mistake which Lyudhurst committed by 
his sweeping motion in the Committee tlxat the consideration 
of Schedules A and B should be postponed, supporting it by a 
speech against all disfranchisement. Happily for the cause 
of reform this motion was carried by a considerable majority. 
Lord Grey might have exclaimed, " The Lord hath delivered 
them into my hand ! " 

Brougham, by the general consent of the Cabinet, now 
dictated the course to be pursued. Although always 

" Pleased with the danger when the waves ran high," 

I cannot say that he is always 

"A skilful pilot in extremity." 

But on this occasion he acted boldly, prudently, and suc- 
cessfully. 

A respectful representation was made to the King that the 
time was now come when, without an absolute power of 
creating Peers, the Eeform Bill could not pass. His Majesty 
had been led to believe by the Queen and others with whom 
he lived that the people really had become indifferent about 
reform, and that at any rate they would be contented with a 
much smaller measure of reform than that to which his 
present JMinisters were pledged. He had likewise a notion 
which seemed very absurd when first mentioned, but which 



* 12 Hansard, 428. 



t 184 to 113. lb. 454. 



J Sec p. 80. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 407 

the event proyecl to be true, that Lord Lyndhurst and his co- CHAP. 
adjutors, who strenuously argued against all reform, and who ' 

had insisted that the House of Commons as then constituted a.d. 1832. 
was the heau ideal of a representative body in a free country, 
might be induced to become his Ministers for the purpose of 
adopting the bill with amendments and carrying it, so that 
the royal word given in favour of the Eeform Bill might be 
saved. His Majesty, therefore, courteously but firmly refused 
the demand made upon him by his Ministers ; they resigned 
in a body, and he sent for Lord Lyndhurst. 

Brougham immediately took leave of the bar in the Court 
of Chancer}', and on this occasion in a very temperate and 
becoming tone. After saying that he trusted the time would 
ere long come when the highest judicial duties of our civil 
tribunals would be unmixed with political functions, he thus 
concluded : — 

" And now, upon quitting this Court, I should, in ordinary 
circumstances, feel nothing but the pain of parting with those to 
whom my kind and respectful thanks ai-e so justly due, for the 
unvaried respect and kindness which I have experienced from 
them. But in my voluntary retirement from hence, which is 
only painful as it causes this separation, I am supported by the 
principles which have dictated the course I pursue. 1 am more 
than supported ; the personal feelings to which I have adverted 
are lost in those which now compel me, I trust without any 
undue sense of pride, to regard the abandonment of power at the 
command of public duty, not as misfortune, but as glory." 

He then set to work in good earnest in his political The cimn- 
capacity, and while an attempt was making to quicken into pioyment 
life the feeble embryo of the new Government, speedily about '^^" '"^ ^^^ 

./ ^ ^ I J intenc'g- 

to be annihilated, he raised a storm all over the island as if num. 
by magical cantrips. In truth he was more busy than Lord 
Holland describes him on the breaking up of the Government 
of " All the Talents," writing pamphlets and paragraphs for 
newspapers, framing petitions to the King and the two 
Houses of Parliam(?nt, directing public meetings to b(^ 
called, furnishing topics for the speakers, and cautioning 
against tumults or any open breach of public tranquillity. 
One stratagem resorted to for the purpose of enhancing 



408 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, his popularity and his influence, was to spread a report tliat 
' lie had been strongly solicited to retain his office under the 



A.D. 1832. new Government. Said the ' Times ' : — 

" The Lord Chancellor was pressed again and again to continue 
in his high office, but peremptorily refused. Surely his Majest}^ 
must have forgotten that bloody record in the house of Bruns- 
"wick, when the too seductive persuasions of his father induced 
the amiable Charles Yorke to abandon his principles and his col- 
leagues." 

But it is quite certain that such a preposterous conception 
never entered the royal mind. The King was acting entirely 
under the advice of Lyndhurst, who was himself impatient 
again to j)ossess the Great Seal. 

Brougham's occupation now was to regulate the pro- 
ceedings of the political unions, and to restrain their im- 
petuosity. The Birmingham Union had a band of 100,000 
men ready to march upon London, and he had great difficulty 
in prevailing upon them to wait for further orders. 

His favourite brother, William, the Master in Chancery, 
was then member for the borough of Southwark, and thus 
(primed, I presume, by the Chancellor) exploded at a meeting 
of his constituents, assembled to petition for the recall of the 
Whigs : — 

" A report has been very prevalent that the Lord Chancellor is 
to continue in office, and form part of a Government — but not 
Earl Grey's Government. This report I have authority to con- 
tradict. M}' brother will ever continue to support the cause of 
the people, and with no other cause will he identifj^ himself. 
Something has been said about the people not paying taxes, and 
a resolution to that effect would be bighl}^ illegal. People might 
individual!}^ refuse without rendering themselves amenable to 
law. Now this is an affair easily arranged. If a tax-gatherer 
calls upon me, and asks me to settle his little bill for taxes, I may 
say to him in reply, ' I have got a little bill of my own, Sir, 
which I should like to have settled by the gentlemen down in 
Westminster who owe it mc, and unless that little bill of mine be 
satisfactorily settled, you nuist never expect me to settle yours.^ 
Before I conclude, I beg to state to this meeting that my brother 
the Lord Chancellor is at this moment in better health than ever; 
he is in good fighting order, as the sham reformers will discover 
to their cost. [^Thunders of aj^j^lausc] He will prove a sharp 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAZy;. 409 

thorn in their sides; he -svill never desert the cause of the CHAP, 
people." * 

Lord Lyndhurst was not successful in his attempt to form a.d. i832. 
a new Government to carry the modified Eeform Bill, and 
although, to the astoniishment of all mankind, the Duke of 
Wellington was willing to join him, he was obliged to throw 
up his commission, censured by Peel, and covered with 
ridicule. 

The King was reduced to the sad necessity of submission, 
and having signed a formal promise to consent to create 
Peers for the purpose of carrying the Eeform Bill when 
advised so to do by Lord Grey, the Whig Ministry was to be 
reinstated. 

In the explanations which then took place Brougham was 
very temperate and forbearing, leaving it to Lord Grey to 
state the motives of the Cabinet in retiring and returning, 
as if he himseK had taken no part in it, uttering only these 
words : — 

" I do not mean to occupy your Lordships' time by adding a word 
to what has dropped from my noble friend, except to state that 
which I am sure was passing across his mind when he addressed 
your Lordships — that considering the absolute necessity, in the 
present state of the country, of passing this measure, we shall not 
again return to office except upon the condition not only of our 
possessing the ability to carry the bill efficiently through the 
House, but also to caiTy it through with every reasonable des- 
patch." f 

This intimation was well understood, and had the desired 
effect of carrying the bill through the House with every 
reasonable despatch, without exercising the power which had 
been obtained. At the suggestion of the Duke of Wellington 
(it was said upon a hint from the King himself) a con- 
siderable number of Tory Peers absented themselves from the 

♦ 'Roebuck's History of tlio "Wliig INIinistry,' vol. ii. p. 297. I presume 
roviscil by one of the brotherH, if not by both. I liavo reason to rtineniber 
this siKjfch, for when Attorney General I was much embarrastied by it when 
quoted ap^ainst me, conducting an ex-olficio i)rusecution btgun by my j)re- 
deccssor, Sir W. Horce, for a lilxil in a newspaper exhorting a passive resist- 
ance to tile payment of taxes. 

t 12 Hansard, 1022. 



410 



. EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 



A.D. 1832. 



Reform 
finally 
carried, and 
l^ai'liameiit 
prorogued. 



House during the subsequent stages of the bill, so that it 
went through the Committee without any material alteration, 
and finally passed the House by a majority of eighty-four. 
The sister bills for Scotland and Ireland soon followed, and 
the cause of Eeform had a complete triumph. 

Lord Brougham makes a question in his * Political Phi- 
losophy ' * : — 

"Whether or not, if no secession had taken place, and the 
Peers had persisted in really opposing the most important pro- 
visions of the bill, we should have had recourse to the perilous 
creation ? " 

And he adds : — 

" I cannot, with any confidence, answer it in the affirmative. 
I had a strong feeling of the necessity of the case in the very 
peculiar circumstances we were placed in. But such was m}'- 
deep sense of the dreadful consequences of the act, that I much 
question whether I should not have preferred running the risk of 
confusion that attended the loss of the bill as it then stood ; and 
I have a strong impression on my mind that my illustrious friend 
[Lord Grey] would have more than met me half-way in the de- 
termination to face that risk (and of course to face the clamours 
of the people, which would have cost us little) rather than expose 
the Constitution to so imminent a hazard of subversion." 

But I cannot doubt that if Lyndhurst had not quailed, the 
fact would have been accomplished. I have heard, and I 
believe, that a list of fifty new Peers was made out, and, con- 
sisting chiefly of Scotch Peers, eldest sons of British Peers, 
and respectable elderly gentlemen without any sons, it would 
not have made a larger permanent addition to the peerage 
than Pitt had made in a single batch. But there can be no 
doubt that it would have been a serious blow to the Con- 
stitution, and we must greatly rejoice that it was warded off. 

At last, the royal assent having been given to the three 
Keform Bills, and his Majesty in his speech from the throne 
having expressed a hope that they would restore to the nation 
general confidence in the legislature, and give additional 
security to the settled institutions of the State, the Chancellor 
had the satisfixction of declaring it to be " his Majesty's royal 



* Yul. iii. p. 308. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHA^I. 411 

will and pleasure tliat Parliament should be prorogued until CHAP, 
the 16th day of October." * ^' 



This turned out to be the closing scene of the last unre- a.d. 1832. 
formed Parliament, for it never met again. But this was not 
then by any means the intention of King William. 

He now felt, not unnaturally, a gi'udge against his present Dispute be- 
Ministers, and he resolved to get rid of them as speedily as Klnt^andhis 
possible — in the mean time thwarting them when he con- i^Hnisters 
stitutionally could. They were desirous of dissolution, as soon solving tiie 
as preparations could be made for a general election under l^j.^"Jj^p" ^. 
the new regime. He wished to mortify them by deferring liameut. 
the time when the much-coveted fruits of reform were to be 
tasted, and he thought that the proposal was an uncalled-for 
interference with his prerogative. 

IJiappened to be within hearing when, in the beginning of 
November, this controversy between them was brought to a 
conclusion. In consequence of the promotions occasioned by 
the death of Lord Tenterden, I had been appointed Solicitor 
General ; and as there was to be no public levee held soon, I 
was summoned to a private audience of his Majesty, that 
I might kiss hands and be knighted. I found Lord Grey, 
Brougham, and several other Ministers, standing round the 
King in his closet. They all seemed, at first, to be in a state 
of great excitement ; but this gradually subsided. I was pre- 
sented, knelt, and rose " Sir John." His Majesty then put a 
few unmeaning questions to me without attending to my 
answers, and we subjects all ^^ithd^ew. As we were going- 
down the steps to our carriages Brougham whis2)ered to me, 
*' Off for Dudley — Parliament dissolved." 

He afterwards fully explained to me that they had just had 
a most stormy interview with the King, who had been more 
obstinate and wrong-headed than they had ever found hi in ; 
that they had tried with all sincerity and respect to explain 
to him tliat, although he might htue withheld his assent 
from the lieform Bill, now that it had, with his concurrence, 
become law, a dissolution was inevitable, as the existing Par- 
lianHsnt stood condemned and sentenced, and the people were 
entitled to the exercise of their new franchises. "No I" he 

* 14 Hansard, HIG. 



412 EEIGN OF WILLIAM lY. 

CHAP, declared, "he could see no necessity for tliat." The new 
franchises were to be exercised when a new Parliament was 



A.D. 1832. called, but the present Parliament had sat little more than a 
year, and although the two Houses had lately been at vari- 
ance, he thought there would be perfect unanimity between 
them. 

This being a sort of legal question, the argument on the 
side of the ministers was left almost entirely to the Chan- 
cellor, who tried to show that the Eeform Bill in its spirit 
really enacted an immediate dissolution, and who assured his 
Majesty that, if not fairly acted upon, instead of being, as 
his Majesty had in the conclusion of his speech from the 
throne prayed that it might be — " fruitful in promoting the 
security of the State, and the contentment and weKare of 
the people " — it might lead to rebellion and civil war. Still 
the King was not convinced, when Lord Grey, in a low, 
respectful, but solemn tone, informed his Majesty that his 
present servants, after due deliberation, were unanimously of 
opinion that the reassembling of the present Parliament 
would be an unconstitutional and most inexpedient step, for 
which they could not be responsible, and therefore that they 
must immediately, with all humility, resign their offices into 
The King liig Majesty's hands. " Well," said the King, " I yield, but, 
my Lords and Gentlemen, remember it is against my opinion 
and my wishes." 
Brougham Brougham now bore "his blushing honours thick upon 
zenith of liii^?" ^^^ 3^ay be considered as at his highest point of great- 
his great- ncss. Although he held the Great Seal for two years more, 
ere long there were dissensions in the Cabinet, there were dis- 
contents among the Kadicals, there were dangerous disturb- 
ances in Ireland, there were complaints that the Eeform Bill 
by no means produced the felicity promised from it; dis- 
coveries were made that the Chancellor's judgments were 
sometimes ratlier crude, and heavy reproaches were levelled 
against him from many quarters that he had utterly forgotten 
solemn promises of promotion and patronage. But for a brief 
space, comprising the end of the year 1832 and the beginning 
of 1833, he enjoyed, I really believe, a greater supremacy and 
popularity tlian any of his predecessors, Cardinal Wolsey 



ness. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHASI. 413 

alone excepted. The nation was actually mad about the CHAP, 
Keform' Bill, and the merit of carrying it through the Lords ' 

was chiefly attributed to Lord Chancellor Brougham. He a.d. 18o2. 
boldly asserted, and people for a while believed, that he had 
cleared off all arrears in the Court of Chancery — the first 
instance of such an exploit since the time of Sir Thomas 
More ; he had promised reforms in every department of jmis- 
prudence, which were to render the administration of justice in 
all courts, civil and criminal, common law and equity, temporal 
and ecclesiastical, simple, speedy, certain, and cheap. He cir- 
culated reports that in the midst of all his political and judicial 
labours he had renewed his experiments on light and colours, 
and that he was preparing a new edition, with notes and illus- 
trations, of Paley's ' Natural Theology ' ; and by the distribu- 
tion of his own patronage, and borrowing liberally from the 
patronage of his colleagues — above all, by promising, five or 
six deep, places which were in his own gift, and many which 
were not — he had enlisted in his service a corps of literary 
janissaries such as had never before existed or been imagined 
in this country. He was eulogised superlatively in all sorts 
of publications. The ^ Times ' newspaper was called his 
organ — even the Opposition journals* excepted him from 
the censure cast on the other members of the Whig Cabinet, 
on the plea that, although associated with them, he was 
exempt from their odious aristocratic tendencies, while he 
eclipsed them all by his talents and acquirements. Dedica- 
tions, attempting to describe his virtues, were showered 
do^\Ti upon him by all classes, particularly by the clergy; 
strangers flocked to London from all parts of the kingdom to 
look at him ; the Court of Chancery, generally a desert from 
its dulness, as often as he sat there was crowded to suffoca- 
tion ; when his carriage drew up in the street a mob of 
admirers gathered round to see him get into it, clieering him 
as he passed by ; and the Itah'an image boys gave orders for 
grosses of Lord Brougham in plaster of l*aris faster than they 

* Particularly the ' Mom ing Herald.' It was said that the brothor-in-law 
of the editor, a really very worthy divine, had received a good living from 
the Chancellor, who declared that " in Chiireh promotion imriy must be 
disregarded." 



414 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP, could be manufactured. In this palmy state he could not be 

' accused of "high-blown pride," for he was good-humoured 

A.D. 1832. and courteous and kind to everybody, and seemed to regret 

that he could not at all times enjoy social intercourse with 

old acquaintances on a footing of perfect equality.* 

But he was 

' Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,' 

His coming and before three fleeting summers were gone he had not only 
fallen from power, but he was ungenerously deserted by 
friends, while cruelly assaulted by foes; he was maligned 
by those to whom he had been a benefactor ; all mankind 
seemed to be in a conspiracy against him ; and his own mental 
faculties could hardly bear the shock which they had to sus- 
tain. From this depression he rallied. He was again held 
up to pubKc gaze, but rather resembling a target to be fired 
at than, as once, a Divinity to be worshipped. 

I have now to describe some of his exploits while his 
prosperity continued, and painfully to accompany his down- 
ward career. 
Elections for The elections for the first Eeformed House of Commons 
fbrme/par- ^cut strougly in favour of the Whigs. Having myself, after 
liament. q, sharp contcst, been returned for the newly-enfranchised 
borough of Dudley, I had the honour of being warmly con- 
gratulated by the Lord Chancellor as representative of " iron," 
— the professed object of creating this constituency having 
been the protection of the "iron interest." His Lordship, 
however, waggishly observed, that the bill was defective in not 
providing a seat for the " hrass interest," which Mr. Solicitor 
might more appropriately have filled. As long as he held the 
Great Seal we went on together most harmoniously and 
cordially, although I had reason to believe that he opposed 
my appointment as a law officer of the Grown. I did my 



* I hai^pcncd to have an interview witli him in his private room in the 
House of Lords on the IGth of August, 1832, the day of the prorogation after 
William IV. had withdrawn, and vast multitudes continued still congregated 
to have a peep at Henry IX. He recalled with regret the time when he could 
walkaway unobserved from the robing room of the King's Bench with his 
great coat on and his umbrella under his arm. " How I hate these trappings," 
said he, pointing to his gold gown and the mace and purse. 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 415 

best to support him in all that he brought forward, and he C^^^- 

always treated me with consideration and kindness. 

Whig rule now seemed permanently established in Eng- a-d. i832. 
land, and the general expectation was that its march would 
be smooth and easy. But, in truth, howeyer prudently the 
Whigs hereafter had behaved, they were sure to cause dis- 
appointment and to incur censure. The great mass of the 
people had imbibed the notion that political corruption was 
now at an end for ever ; and that in all time to come, the 
nation being wisely governed, all ranks would be prosperous 
and contented. 

The evils which must necessarily be generated by the Blunders of 
inherent vices of governors and governed, and the imperfec- ^ ^^ * 
tion of all human institutions, were soon greatly aggravated 
by gross blunders which the Whig Government committed 
after being possessed of absolute power with popular ap- 
plause. I do not know that Brougham was personally to 
be charged with any of these ; for at this time, although a 
prominent member of the Cabinet, he was not allowed to 
originate important measures. But, as Chancellor, he was 
especially responsible for the bill which, at the first meeting 
of the Eeformed Parliament, brought about a severance 
between the Whigs and a large section of the Liberal party. 

Ireland was then under the administration of Mr. Stanley, iiisii Coer- 
heir to the house of Derby, who, as Chief Secretary to the 
Lord-Lieutenant, had made himself viceroy over him ; and 
this very clever but very rash youth, by his irritating pro- 
ceedings respecting the collection of tithes, operating upon 
a constant predisposition among the Irish to agrarian out- 
rage, had brought about a general disregard of the laws 
intended for the protection of life and property. He saw 
no remedy except a suspension of the Constitution and 
the establishment of military despotism in that portion of 
the United Kingdom. This he proposed in the shape of his 
famous "Irish Coercion Bill;" and, unfortunately, it was 
not distasteful to Lord Grey, who, although at all times the 
champion of liberty in England, believed with the great 
body of English gentlemen, AVhig and Tory, that our Hiber- 
nian brethren were only to be governed by force. If this 



416 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CI^P. maxim liad been steadily acted upon, it would have produced 

. tranquillity and material prosperity, as was seen under the 

A.D.1833. Earl of Strafford and Oliver Cromwell ; but the alternation 

of severity and licence was long the bane of that unhappy 

country, keeping it both turbulent and enslaved. 

When the subject came before the Cabinet there was 
some difference of opinion. From the Chancellor's ultra- 
Liberalism, it might have been expected that he would have 
been shocked by the notion of the first act of the Keformed 
Parliament, instead of extending freedom and security over 
the empire, being to render all Irishmen liable to be trans- 
ported beyond the seas, by the sentence of a court-martial, 
for merely alleged civil offences. But he — forgetting the 
provocation of which Ireland had to complain in the anti- 
Catholic penal code, and the commercial restrictions forbid- 
ding her to import cattle or corn into England, or to trade 
with the English colonies — had, like Lord Grey, fostered a 
strong prejudice against the Irish people, and he gave it as 
his opinion that Stanley should be gratified. Accordingly, 
the Chancellor, with his own hand, composed the following 
sentence for the Koyal Speech : — 

" It is my painful duty to observe that the disturbances in 
Ireland have greatly increased. A spirit of insubordination and 
violence has risen to the most fearful height, rendering life and 
property insecure, and threatening the most fatal consequences 
if not promptly and effectually repressed. I feel confident that 
to your loyalty and patriotism I shall not resort in vain for 
assistance in these afflicting circumstances." 

The bill being introduced by Lord Grey to suspend the 
Habeas Corpus Act and to establish courts-martial in Ireland, 
the Chancellor, deploring the sad necessity for a measure of 
such severity, declared that " the time had arrived when it 
would be inhuman as well as unjust to hesitate about sup- 
porting it," and he readily took upon himself the full share 
of the responsibility which might attach to his Majesty's 
Government for having proposed it. Pie then resorted to 
the ingenious argument that, as we had no right to expect 
the allegiance of the Irish people unless we afforded them 
protection, a refusal to pass the bill would justify them in 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 417 

separating from us and setting up an independent govern- CHAP, 
ment of their own.* . 

This inauspicious bill easily passed the House of Lords, a.t>. 1833. 
being hailed with joy by Lord Eldon and his Tory associates 
as outdoing their " Six Acts " passed after the " Manchester 
Massacre ; " but it called forth execrations in the House of 
Commons against " the base and bloody Whigs." It seri- 
ously damaged the reputation of Lord Grey's Goyernment, 
and in the following year it was the direct cause of his fall 
from power. 

During: this session Brouo^ham was very assiduous in his The Chan- 

.... cellor's k- 

efforts for improving the administration of justice in Eng- gisiatire 
land. He passed a bill for the abolition of a great many ^^^^s^^''^^- 
sinecure offices in the gift of the Lord Chancellor, and for 
fixing the salary of this high functionary at 14,000^. a year, 
with a retiring pension of 5000?. a year. He likewise 
succeeded in abolishing the Court of Delegates, — a very 
inconvenient tribunal of a23peal from the Ecclesiastical 
Courts, imvented at the Reformation, when the appeal to 
Rome was taken away. He substituted for it a much better 
tribunal of appeal — " the Judicial Committee of the Privy 
Council," AA'hich still subsists and has worked very satis- 
factorily. 

He was not so fortunate with a bill for establishing local 
Courts, which he had proposed in the House of Commons 
when member for Yorkshire, which he laid on the table 
of the House of Lords when, "to his own astonishment," 
he became Chancellor, and which then dropped amidst the 
tumults of parliamentary reform. He now pressed it for- 
ward with the greatest earnestness. Although the principle 
of the bill was good, it was not by any means skilfully 
framed, and it was properly rejected. Several years aiter- 
wards a similar bill, much improved, was introduced into 
the House of Commons by Mr. Fitzroy, under the name of 
the " County Courts Act," and received the sanction of the 
legislature. 

Befbi-e this session closed, the House of Lords was much Altercation 
scandalised by a very indecorous altercation between the ciiancdlor 

* 15 Hansard, 718. 
VOL. YIII. 2 E 



418 



REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



and the late 
Chief Jus- 
tice of the 
Common 
Pleas. 



CHAP. Chancellor and another law lord. Chief Justice Best, who 
V. . . . . 

had been very improperly appointed to preside in the Court 

A.D. 1833. of Common Pleas by the personal interference of George lY. 
when Prince Kegent, and had very improperly been created 
a peer on condition of resigning his office to favour a minis- 
terial job, frequently took a part in the discussion of law 
bills, and never without displaying ignorance and incapacity. 
He was now enlisted in the Tory opposition, and, laying 
himself so open to exposure, Brougham was in the habit of 
attacking him most unmercifully. On one occasion, having 
pointed out some mistake into which Lord Lyndhurst had 
fallen, he added — 

" and thus from over-indulging his fancy, my noble and learned 
friend, the Lord Chief Baron, has got into as gross an inaccuracy 
as would have done honour even to the late Chief Justice of the 
Common Pleas himself." 

Lord Wynford. — " I have submitted to this for a long time, 
but I will not be held up to ridicule in this way any longer." 
[Cries of Order, order]. 

The Lord Chancellor. — " My noble and learned friend, the late 
Chief Justice, is most disorderly no doubt, but I do not com- 
plain. When I speak of his inaccuracy or forge tfulness I merely 
mean that he has forgotten, or perhaps has never read, the books 
he refers to. I was not holding up to ridicule my noble and 
learned friend the late Chief Justice. It was no holding up of 
mine, and I hope my noble and learned friend, the late Chief 
Justice, will bear in mind what Dean Swift said of persons who 
were laughed at ." 

Lord Wynford. — •" I will bear this no longer. The noble Lord 
has attacked me by name. He who is appointed to enforce the 
orders of your Lordships' house is ignorant of them or wantonly 
breaks them. I move that the Clerk do now read the loth of 
your Standing Orders, which requires ' all personal, sharp, or 
taxing speeches to be.forborne.' " 

The Standing Order was read, which goes on to say — 

" and as nothing offensive is to be spoken, so nothing is to be 
ill-taken if the party that speaks it shall presently make a fair 
exposition of the words that might bear an ill-construction ; and 
if any offence be given in that kind, the House will sharply 
censure the offender, and give the party offended a fit repara- 
tion." 



A.D. 183: 



LIFE OF LOKD BROUGHAM. 419 

Lord Chancellor. — " Well, my Lords, if my words might bear CHAP, 
any ill-construction, have not I presently made a fair exposition of 
them ? This being so, my Lords, I am the party offended ; and 
my noble and learned friend, the late Chief Justice, being the 
offender, ought to be sliarply censured by your Lordships, and is 
bound to give me a jit reparation!' 

Soon after, when the Warwick Disfranchisement Bill came 
up from the Commons, he gave great offence to the whole 
body of barristers by supposing that they were prowling 
about for a brief, as dogs for a bone. On his own motion, the 
usual order had been made for the hearing of counsel, and 
the common course would have been for the promoters and 
opposers of the bill themselves to have chosen their counsel 
respectively ; but the Chancellor wantonly observed, — 

" It will be necessary for the House to name the counsel by 
whom it would be assisted ; if not, all Westminster Hall may 
be let in upon us [a laugh]. There is now an order generally 
that counsel may be heard, and any one gentleman, or score of 
gentlemen, on the look out, may come dropping in under the cover 
of that general order for the purpose of being engaged as counsel. 
A more absurd course could not be followed." 

But, in truth, the order could have misled no one; and 
no one would have taken advantage of it for a purpose so 
disgraceful as the imputation thrown out implied. But he 
had always great delight in laughing at briefless barristers, — 
a class to which at some periods of his life he was himself 
in great danger of belonging. He was very incautious in 
attacking bodies of men, and thus sometimes excited more 
ill-will than by a personal quarrel which might be soon 
appeased. Having flattered some of the Bishops by asking 
them to name incumbents for small livings in his gift, he 
offended them all by saying in their absence, when they had 
left the house to go to dinner, that '* their god was their 
belly." 

The memorable public legislative measures of this session Irish Tem- 
were (1), The Irish Church Temporalities Act, by which ten "^^^ 
bishoprics were suppressed, and the Church cess or rate was siav.iy 
to be paid from the produce of Church lands; and ("2), The Bill.' '^" 
Slavery Abolition Act, by which, after a short apprentice- 

2 E 2 



420 REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP. g]iip iq freedom, all slaves in the British colonies were to be 
' set free. The Lord Chancellor supported them usefully as 



A.D. 1833. they passed through the House of Lords ; but they both 
originated with the Commons, and were both measures of 
Stanley, who, in spite of his Coercion Bill, was still considered 
the chief prop and ornament of the Whigs. Brougham, who 
now held himself out as the head of the anti-Slavery party, 
was desirous of taking to himself all the merit of the last 
bill ; but he certainly had very little to do with it, and in 
the Cabinet he warmly opposed the pecuniary grant to the 
masters of the slaves, which turned out to be a poor com- 
pensation to them for what they had lost. The bill, in its 
results, cannot be much boasted of or rejoiced in ; for, while 
it has been seriously injurious to the cultivation of the soil 
in the West Indies, I fear it has not improved the condition 
of the negroes ; and wiser plans might have been adopted 
for conferring upon them, along with freedom, the blessings 
of industry, knowledge, and religion. 

The novelty of the Chancellorship beiug now over, 
Brougham found the duties of an equity Judge rather 
irksome, and he wished for some change in his situation, 
but could not make up his mind what it should be. He 
often talked of becoming "Minister of Justice," till the 
difficulties which obstructed the creation of such an office 
proved to be insurmountable. Its emoluments, patronage, 
precedence, and jprestige likewise must have been much in- 
ferior to those enjoyed with the Great Seal. If he was 
believed to compose, or to suggest, or to rejoice in the daily 
paragraphs still puffing him in the * Times,' it might have 
been conjectured that he wished to be written up to the Pre- 
miership, for this journal, not praising Lord Grey or the other 
members of the Cabinet, and occasionally levelling severe 
sarcasms at some of them, held up the Chancellor to constant 
admiration, not only for his eloquence and his legal lore, and 
his literary and scientific acquirements, but for his unri- 
valled talents as a statesman. 

About this time he resented in a very marked manner 
what he consideivd a piece of impertinence in H. R. H. the 
Duke of Cumberland, afterwards King of Hanover. AVhile 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 421 

the Chancellor was addressing the House very calmly and CHAP, 
very much to the purpose, the Duke called out '* Question, ' 



Question." Chancellor in furore. — " I ask your Lordships a.d. 1833. 
whether there is decency in that call?" Not contented 28th July. 
with this expression of resentment, he lay by for an oppor- 
timity of still further punishing the royal delinquent, and 
soon after, speaking on the Slavery Abolition Bill, he 
said : — 

" It would give the man of colour as clear a right to sit in l-^th A;ig. 
that house (if his Majesty should so please) as either of the 
illustrious Dukes now present [Wellington and Cumberland], 
whether the illustrious Duke who is illustrious by his deeds, or 
the illustrious Duke who is illustrious by the courtesy of the 
House." 

Meanwhile he continued to work on very industriously in Brougham 
the judicial business of the House of Lords. His early c",! business 
traininof orave him a considerable advantao^e in dealino: with of the House 

^ ^ . . of Lords. 

Scotch appeals, and he was by no means in the bewildering 
position of his successors, Pepys, Truro, and Cranworth, who 
were suddenly called upon to review the decisions of the 
Supreme Court of Scotland, never in their lives having been 
concerned in a Scotch cause or read a word of Scotch law. 
They, as their safer course, were driven to affirm — but he, to 
show his skill, was rather pleased to reverse; and he con- 
tinued to give offence by sarcastic observations on the Lords 
of Session, so that in the Parliament House at Edinburgh 
there were serious complaints of his rashness. 

In the Court of Chancery, where he was quite a novice, in the Com t 
he had counted upon support and assistance from Home, ° a"cu}. 
now Attorney General, an equity counsel of some reputation, 
whom, with tliis view, he had appointed a law officer of the 
Crown ; but that speculation turned out most unfortunate. 
Mr. Attorney was opposed by Sugden, a Tory lawyer in- 
finitely superior to him in capacity and acquirement, and 
eager, for personal and political reasons, to expose the inex- 
perience of the Whig Lord Chancellor. One contest between 
them, in wliich tlu^ learned counsel was compared by tlio 
Lord Higli Chancellor in plain terms to a hug^ gave rise to 
many newspaper paragraphs and many caricatures, and is 



422 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP. J20W sometimes alluded to when lie has become an ex- 

Chancellor.* 

A.D. 1833. Brougham was so eager for the glory of clearing off all 
arrears that he would sit at unjuridical times — on Good 
Friday or Easter Monday — and in the evenings, after the 
House of Lords had adjourned. On these occasions he was 
not supposed to make good speed, and, while the counsel 
were arguing, the Judge's spirit was supposed, from his shut 
eyes and depending head, to be wandering in the land of 
Nod. I cannot say that I ever saw him asleep in all my 
life ; but, by way of secondary eyidence, I have seen in the 
print-shops an engraving representing a strong likeness of 
him in the " marble chair" overpowered by slumber, with 
the words underneath, quandoque dormitai. 

His labours, judicial and political, being closed for the 
season, he repaired to Brougham Hall, and an absurd para- 
graph having appeared in a London newspaper representing 
him as an opium eater, to subdue certain pains from which 
he suffered, and stating that in travelling to Westmorland 
he had slept fifty successive hours, he thought it worth while 
to make his brother write a letter to be published, saying : — 

" The Chancellor has no pains of any kind ; he never took 
laudanum or opium in any way whatever in the whole course 
of his life ; he is enjoying the very best health, and no man of 
his age is more likely to live thirty years. And as for the story 
of his sleeping fifty hours, I was with him, and he did not sleep 
five hours the whole way." 

Brougham's rpj^^ loTi^ vacatiou of this v^ar he professed to devote to 

philosophi- ° . . . 

cai pursuits philosophy. During a sojourn at his Tusculum in Westmorland 
ceilor '^' ^^® ^^^ compose some dialogues in imitation of Cicero's, and 
he had some communication with Sir Charles Bell respecting a 
new edition of Paley's ' Natural Philosophy,' with cuts and illus- 
trations. At this time he was most potently persuaded that 
while holding the Great Seal and discharging all the duties of 
Chancellor with unprecedented efficiency, he should be able 

* The ' Times ' of 28tli July, 1832, suggested nnotlier comparison not quite 
80 contemptuous for this enemy of the Lord Chancellor; Has Sir Edward 
Sugden no friend to tell him that the cock-sparrow cimuot contend with the 
eaqle ? 



LIFE OF LOED BROCJGHAM. 423 

to give to the world a new work which would eclipse the CHAP. 
* Novum Organum.' He not unreasonably expected that his ' 

tenure of office would be long, and he conld reckon with a.d. 1833. 
absolute certainty on his own energy and perseverance. 

It would appear from successive defences of character and 
conduct which appeared in the * Times/ that he began to be 
considerably annoyed by attacks in the * Quarterly Keview ' 
and other periodicals. We find in the leading journal an 
article headed, "Unjust charges against the Chancellor 
triumphantly refuted," and such observations as this : — 

" We really pity these Tory slanderers, who must be almost 
suffocated with baffled malice and overwhelming shame." 

" The violent abuse of the Chancellor is said to be by two 
briefless barristers, who write negro-fashion, under the scourge 
of the whipper-in. The result is impotent rage and pointless 
slander. An eminent law authority superintends the operation." 

This was supposed to mean Lord Lyndhurst. Notwith- 
standing their subsequent strict alliance, the two noble and 
learned friends were now at mortal enmity. I had about 
this time the honour to be counsel for the Chancellor in a 
frivolous action for false imprisonment brought against him 
by a pettifogging attorney of the name of Dicas, who had 
been regularly committed to the Fleet in the course of a 
Chancery suit. The trial came on before Lord Lyndhurst as 
Chief Baron, and he strove hard to obtain a verdict for the 
plaintiff, but could not contrive to do so. I must confess, 
however, that he seemed less actuated by malice than a love 
of fun, for he seemed to think that there would be much 
laughter if the great Lord Brougham, the Whig Lord Chan- 
cellor, should be found to have unlawfully deprived a freeman 
of his liberty, and a jury should award damages against him, 
were it only a farthing. 

Brougham now suffered a heavy loss by the death of his 
brother James, who had, without any of the brilliancy of the 
Chancellor, possessed much more prudence and discretion. 
He had been called to the English bar, but did not regularly 
follow the profession of tlie law. For some years past he had 
acted as a sort of private secretary to the Chancellor, and 
had great influence over him. To his death many ascribed 



424 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, the fantastical acts and the misfortunes which soon after 
' marked the Chancellor's career, but I doubt whether any- 
A.D. 1833. thing could have saved this misguided man from the prompt- 
ings of the evil genius which he carried about with him in his 
own breast, and which was ever ready to lead him astray. 
He was blessed, however, with one counteracting influence, 
the love of kindred, which he ever strongly felt, and, guided 
by which, he was ever ready to be kind and generous. On 
this occasion he was deeply affected, and he paid to a very 
. large amount all the debts of his deceased brother. 
His dispute When Michaelmas term came round the Chancellor's great 
the Attor- ' objoct was to get rid of Home as Attorney G-eneral. His in- 
ney Gene- capacity to couduct some state trials for libel which were 
coming on was given as a pretext, but the true motive was to 
withdraw him from the Court of Chancery, and to substitute 
for him, as the equity law officer, Pepys, a consummate 
equity lawyer, and much better qualified to enter the lists 
against Sugden. 

The transaction at first appeared to proceed very smoothly. 
I received a note from the Chancellor announcing that I was 
Attorney General, Home having agreed to become a puisne 
Baron of the Exchequer, on the resignation of Baron Bayley. 
But meeting Home soon after, he thus addressed me : — 
" I have been shamefully deceived and ill-used. Brougham 
asked me to become a puisne Judge. I said, ' there is an 
insurmountable obstacle. I have conscientious scruples about 
pronouncing sentence of death, and therefore I cannot go the 
circuit or sit in a criminal court.' ' Never mind that,' cried 
Brougham, ^ you accept the appointment, and you shall never 
go the circuit or sit in a criminal court. We are going to 
remodel the Court of Exchequer. There will be a puisne 
Baron confined entirely to equity business, and you shall be 
the man.' On these terms I could not refuse, for such a 
Baron of the Exchequer would be the same as a Vice- 
Chancellor. I went to take leave of Lord Grey — a proper 
mark of respect as I thought — and I said to him, ' I was glad 
that the G-overnment had resolved to remodel the Court of 
Exchequer, and to have an equity Baron, an office I was 
glad to accept, although I never could have acted as a 



LIFE OF LOKD BEOUGHAM. 425 

criminal Judge.' * Equity Baron 1 ' exclaimed Lord Grey, CHAP. 
^ it is the first time I have heard of such an arrangement, and ' 

I cannot say that the Cabinet, much less that Parliament, a.d. 1833. 
will sanction it. I understood from the Chancellor that you 
wished to become a puisne Judge in the common course, 
without any special stipulations ; and I confess for one, I do 
not understand a puisne not being ready to discharge all the 
duties of the office.' Then," continued Home, " I told him 
plainly and distinctly and literally all that had passed 
between me and the Chancellor on the subject. Lord Grey 
observed, * This is wondrous strange, but I think it my duty to 
warn you that you ought not to accept the appointment upon 
a supposed pledge that the Government will do what you say 
the Chancellor promised.' Now, my dear Campbell, you and 
I have always acted cordially together. I can throw no blame 
upon you, whatever may happen. Would you mind going to 
the Chancellor and hearing what he says about it ? " 1 went. 
Brougham assured me that he had never given any pledge upon 
the subject ; that Home was under an entire delusion ; that 
having said something about disliking circuits, he had merely 
been told that perhaps the other Judges might make some 
arrangement to relieve him from this duty ; but that there 
never was any contemplation to legislate upon the subject, and 
that Home having agreed to resign the office of Attorney 
General, the good of the service required that he should do so. 
I refused to be the bearer of any such message to him, and 
vowed that I would in no way farther interfere in the affair — 
a vow which I most rigidly observed, after I had told Horne 
that he must settle the dispute with the Chancellor himself, 
or find another negotiator. The result was that Brougham 
persuaded Lord Grey to concur in his views, and an intima- 
tion was given to Horne that the King's pleasure had been 
taken upon the point, and that he must either resign the 
office of Attorney General or be superseded. Home replied 
with great spirit that he was ready to resign, but that he 
would sooner suffer death himself than pronounce sentence of 
death upon a f(3l low-creature. His resignation was accepted, 
and, refusing the puisne Judgeship, he retreated on his private 
practice at the bar, which was very inconsiderable. 



426 KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP. I knew nothing more of the affair till I received a note 
' from Brougham desiring me to meet him. at his private room 
A.D. 1834. in Lincoln's Inn Hall. I found Sir John Bayley with him, 
executing the resignation of his office of puisne Baron. He 
said to me : — " I could make nothing of that foolish fellow 
Home. I am sorry for his hallucination, but the King 
has signed the warrant for your appointment as Attorney 
General, and Pepys is your Solicitor." 

Home complained to every one that Brougham had 
swindled him out of his office. My only consolation was that 
while some blamed Brougham, and some blamed Home, and 
some blamed both, I did not on this occasion incur even a 
suspicion of any intrigue to push out my predecessor.* 
4th Feb. Before this affair was brought to a conclusion another 

Session of Parliament had begun ; an eventful session, the 
conclusion of which saw Brougham presiding on the wool- 
sack for the last time, notwithstanding all his manoeuvres to 
strengthen his position and to prolong his power. 
Brougham's It opened very inauspiciously in the House of Commons 
Sir John ^ '^^'ith discussions on the Pension List, which damaged the 
Campbell popularity of the Whig Government still more than the Irish 
thrown out Cocrcion Bill. A writ was ordered for the election of a new 

at Dudley. 



member for Dudley on the same evening, when, " amidst loud 
and general cheers," notice was given of a renewed motion on 
the abuses of the Pension List. I expressed to Brougham great 
apprehensions that I might be rejected at Dudley, although 
my constituents, 'when I had visited them in the preceding- 
autumn, had come to a unanimous vote approving of my 
conduct as their representative. He laughed me to scorn, 
telling me to trust to the i^restige which the Government had 
acquired. He added, " The electors are not to be blown about 
by every wind of doctrine ; but I advise you not to flatter 
them too much, lest your praises should be thought to be 

In my next interview with him, at the end of six days, I 

♦ When Lord Cottenham became Chancellor, Home willingly acceptoil 
from hiin the humble office of Master in Chancery. He was afterwards 
reconciled to Brougham, but what explanation passed between them I never 
learned. 



LIFE OF LOKD BKOUGHAM. 427 

liad to relate to him that I had been dreadfully beaten, — CHAP, 
that the electors of Dudley were all exasperated against ' 

the " base and bloody Whigs," who, having surrendered a.d. 1834. 
Ireland to martial law, now, by defending the Pension List, 
showed a determination to devote the public revenue raised 
by the sweat of the people to the support of the poor relations 
of wealthy Peers, and to perpetuate all the corrupt practices 
which had prevailed before the mock Reform Bill. He behaved 
very magnanimously, saying: — "Well, Jack, it is a heavy 
blow. Who could have looked for this Dudley hallucina- 
tion ? But never mind, it's no fault of yours. We shall, I 
hope, soon get you in for another place — where, I don't yet 
exactly see. Till you are restored, my law reforms are 
stopped, for no one else can carry them through the House 
of Commons for me. We already feel that Schedule A, from 
which such glory was acquired, is not without its incon- 
veniences." * 

The Lord Chancellor himself undertook the task of ar- 
ranging a seat for Mr. Attorney, and we had several con- 
ferences on the subject with Charles Wood, now First Lord of 
the Admiralty — then Secretary to the Treasury and whipper- 
in for the House of Commons ; but the difficulty was found 
greater than had been anticipated, for popular constituencies 
were perilous, and the scandal of showing that the Whigs had 
reserved a few nomination seats to themselves was to be 
avoided. 

In the mean time great alarm was created by a bill of a How he 
very preposterous nature upon the Law of Libel, brought gpeecV^foi 
into the House of Commons by O'Counell. He was then very 
hostile to the Government, and his object was to propose 
enactments ad cai^tandum, such as putting an end to all pro- 
ceedings by " information," whether under the authority of 
the Attorney General or the Court of King's Bench, — so that 
the " base and bloody Whigs " might be stiU farther damaged 



* Ho did not then tell nio that ho had opposed the wholesale di-sfranchise- 
ment of the small Ijoroughs, but ho afterwards matle no secret of tiiis ; and 1 
have repeatedly heard hiiu in the House of Lords declare that ** from the 
Attorney (ioueral being thrown out of Parliament in 1834, legal reform was 

stopped for a whole session." 



tlie Solici- 
tor General. 



428 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, jjy being driven to oppose what he called " salutary reform." 
' Brougham being then very unwell, a meeting of the Cabinet 
A.D. 1834. was held at his house in Berkeley Square, which was attended 
by the Attorney and Solicitor General. The result of their 
deliberations was, that instead of attacking General O'Connell 
in front, there should be a flank movement which would 
effectually defeat him. A motion was to be made for 
a Committee to inquire into the "Law of Libel." The 
difficulty was that this motion could, under existing cir- 
cumstances, only be made by Mr. Solicitor, and he having 
spent his life in drawing " bills and answers," professed an 
entire ignorance of the subject. Brougham then, in a 
very lucid manner, stated the topics to be treated, the 
manner of treating them, and the order in which they should 
be introduced, and — Mr. Solicitor still looking unhappy — he 
added, " Should you like to have a sketch upon paper of 
your speech?" This offer was gratefully accepted, and the 
Chancellor, though in a very weak state of health and with 
judgments in arrear which he was very desirous of writing, 
must have employed some hours in preparing a brief for Mr. 
Solicitor. This learned functionary, when the evening for his 
motion arrived, delivered a speech on the Law of Libel which 
called forth cheers and applauses from all sides of the House. 
But, the Committee being granted, the subject dropped for 
the Session ; and, as he never again spoke in the House of 
Commons so as to attract notice, if he had not been destined 
to immortality as Lord High Chancellor and Earl of Cotten- 
ham, he might have gone down to future ages as " Single- 
Speech Pepys." * 

After some months had expired a vacancy at last occurred 
at Edinburgh by the elevation of Lord Advocate Jeffrey to 
the Scottish Bench, and Lord Grey said to me, " You must 
try your luck there ; but first get the sanction of the Lord 
Chancellor, or the fat will he in the fire.'' The Lord Chancellor 
approved, and condescended to give me some valuable advice 
for conducting my canvass. 

* Sco 22 Hansard, 410. I liavc nlways tliouglit this speech one of 
Brougham's most wonderful exploits. No one else would have ventured to 
ciam a law officer of the Crowu, or could have done it so felicitously. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 429 

Wlien I had been about eight days in Edinburgh I was CHAP, 
knocked out of bed at four in the mornino^ and told that a " 



Stanley and 
three other 
Cabinet m- 
nistci-s. 



King's messenger had arrived from London with a letter from a.d. 1834. 
the Lord Chancellor, which I must read immediately. I haye Secession of 
not preserved it, but I believe that it ran as follows : — 

" Dear Jack, — Ned Stanley, Graham, Richmond, and Eippy 
have left us. But be not alarmed. AVe shall go on better 
without them. This you must inculcate upon the modern Athe- 
nians. Persevere. I really believe that we are safe. You shall 
know all when we meet. 

" Yours, H. B." 

The messenger likewise brought a letter from the Secretary 
to the Treasuiy stating that the Colonial Secretary, the First 
Lord of the Admiralty, the Postmaster-General, and the 
President of the Board of Trade, had resigned — that all the 
other members of the Cabinet remained steady, and that in 
this crisis everything might depend upon carrying Edinburgh. 
At dawn of day there was a handbill posted all over the city, 
congratulating the electors on the secession of the fugitive 
Ministers, and extolling those who remained true to the cause 
of freedom — particularly the Lord Chancellor, who, born and 
bred among them, reflected such credit on his " own romantic 
town." 

When I returned to London victorious, he complimented 
me on having saved the State ; but he did not enter into any 
particulars of the disruption of the Cabinet, and I have never 
heard from any authentic source what part he personally took 
upon this occasion. From the speech then delivered by him 
in the House of Lords, as reported in Hansard,* he appears to 
liave been quite sound and rational on the vexed " Appro- 
priation Clause." 

" I agree," said he, " in thinking that not one shilling of any Gtli June. 
surplus fund arising from the revenues of the Protestant Church Hiouirhani 
in Ireland should be appropriated to any other purpose, until "■,*,„ '^,f '^''" 
the spiritual wants of the Piotostant community have been fully Cimn-h pro- 
provided for. That having been done on a liberal, even an 1"*'*^- 
extravagant scale, what man is there with audacity to stiitc that 
the residue of the fund may not be fitly applied towards tho 



• 24 Hansard, 298. 



430 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM TV, 



CHAP. 
V. 

A.D.1834. 



Resignation 
of Lord 
Grey. 



moral and religious instruction of the rest of tlie people. In 
determining what is ample provision for religious worship, 
must the number of those to join in that worship be wholly 
kept out of view ? Let me suppose that there should cease to 
be any members of the Established Church in Ireland, instead 
of there being, as at present, a small minority of the population 
attached to it. This you say is an extreme case, but it is by 
putting an extreme case that principles are best tried. If all 
the inhabitants of Ireland should be Eoman Catholics or Presby- 
terians, must we still keep up the full Protestant Episcopalian 
Establishment ? The leader of this secession from the Cabinet, 
.by his own Irish Church Temporalities Bill, allows that you 
may make any redistribution of the property of the Protestant 
Church, according to the spiritual wants of diiferent localities ; 
and , when all these have been amply satisfied, to deny the power 
of the State to apply any surplus which remains to the general 
education of the people, or to any other laudable national pur- 
pose, is rank superstition and mischievous folly." 

The religious question being disposed of, and Lord Grey 
having filled up the vacancies in his Cabinet by subordinate 
adherents devoted to the policy he was pursuing, it was ex- 
pected that his Government would now be famous for unity 
of action, and that he would long remain in office to enjoy his 
triumph over inveterate Tories and mutinous Whigs. But in 
a little month he finally fell, or in his o^Yn language " de- 
scended," from power. 

Lord Grey himself suspected, and his family openly asserted, 
that he was betrayed by Brougham, who, wishing to be Prime 
Minister, originated and fostered the intrigues which produced 
this catastrophe. I believe this charge to be unfounded. 
That Brougham's ambition made him aspire to the " bad 
eminence " I do not doubt ; and that his ojDinion of his own 
talents and acquirements led him into the delusion that he 
was as well qualified for it as Burleigh, Godolphiu, Walpole, 
Pitt the father or Pitt the son, is not improbable; but he 
could not be unconscious of the truth that he was regarded 
with dislike by the King, — what was worse, that the leaders 
of the Liberal party reposed no confidence in him and would 
not agree to serve under him, — and, worst of all, that the 
popularity which had made him representative for the county 
of York had been nearly destroyed by the strange course 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 431 

which on several occasions he had pursued. Therefore the CHAP. 
notion of his being first Lord of the Treasury can hardly at ' 

this time have taken possession of his mind. But, although a.d. iss-t. 
he had no wish forcibly to displace Lord Grey, or systematically 
to annoy him so as to induce him to retire in disgust, he cer- 
tainly was a very troublesome and uncomfortable colleague — 
constantly grasping at power and patronage that did not 
legitimately belong to the ofSce which he held. 

Lord Grey had been much annoyed by the insatiable 
demands of the ultra-Eadicals, who, instead of giving the 
Keform Bill a fair trial, were clamorous for vote by ballot, 
the shortening of parliaments, the further extension of the 
suffrage, and organic changes in the House of Lords. All 
this he could have combated; but the constant fretting 
caused by the insubordination and aggressive spirit of an 
ever-restless colleague he found insupportable, and he had 
expressed and felt a desire to withdraw into private life 
almost from the assembling of the first Eeformed Parlia- 
ment in the spring of 1833. He was not then aware 
of what he afterwards experienced, that inaction, after vio- 
lent political excitement, is still more distressing than official 
crosses, and that the transfer of party chieftainship to a 
former dependent causes a bitter pang in the breast of him 
who had longed for repose. Lord Grey's murmurs and threats 
had caused much uneasiness to the Whig party, who then had 
no hope of retaining office without him ; and strong repre- 
sentations were made to him respecting his obligation to 
remain in office at whatever sacrifice, that he might guide the 
working of the new constitution which by a revolution he had 
achieved."* By such considerations he was long influenced ; 
but any fresh annoyance made him wish that he were re- 
clining under the shade of his trees at Howick, and made him 
again resolve that he would no longer submit to the miseries 
of Downing Street. In this vacillating frame of mind a little 
matter was enough to induce him to take the irrevocable step, 

* Among others, I myself, although nevor enjoying much of his private 
intimacy, was requested by some of his particular friends to write to him in 
the autumn of IH:?:?, pointing out to him how the good of the country, as well 
as of the Whig party, required hiiu to sacrifice his ease to his duty. 



432 



KEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP, and there is no occasion to invent treason or intrigue to account 

, for liis resignation. 

A.D. 1834. But althougli Brougham was falsely charged with fraudulent 
design, he may certainly be considered the immediate cause 
of this event. When the Irish Coercion Bill, which had been 
passed only for one year, was to be renewed, a question arose 
whether it might not be in some degree mitigated by omit- 
ting the court-martial clauses. The Lord-Lieutenant (Lord 
Wellesley) at first expressed a strong opinion against any 
change. Lord Grey and a majority of the Cabinet con- 
curred. Lord Althorp and three others were for mitigation, 
but from deference for the opinion of the Lord-Lieutenant, 
who declared that he could not undertake to govern Ireland 
with impaired powers, they succumbed. Accordingly a bill 
for simply continuing it was introduced in the House of 
Lords. 

This raising a terrible outcry. Brougham, without Lord 
Grey's privity, entered into a correspondence on the subject 
with the Lord-Lieutenant, and sanctioned a communication 
by Mr. Littleton, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, to Mr. 
O'Connell, with a view to obtain his consent to the Con- 
tinuation Bill, if the court-martial clauses should be omitted. 
The Lord-Lieutenant relented, and then a proposal w^as abruptly 
made to the Cabinet to abandon what tliey had all agreed to, 
and what the House of Lords had been prevailed upon by 
Lord Grey to sanction as indispensably necessary for the 
tranquillity and safety of Ireland. Lord Althorp and his 
minority declared that they had been prevailed upon to con- 
sent to military tribunals being kept up for civil offences 
solely on the opinion of the Lord-Lieutenant, and this being 
withdrawn, they could no longer support the bill in its present 
shape. Lord Grey declared that his own opinion remained 
unaltered, and that the Government, after being so pledged, 
could not recede. Tlie Chancellor in vain tried to bring 
about a compromise, urging that on fresh information there 
might be a change of i^olicy without inconsistency or dis- 
honour. 

As soon as the Cabinet broke up Lord Althorp sent in his 
resignation to Lord Grey, and Lord Grey sent it to the King 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 433 

with his own. William lY. very readily accepted them, for CHAP, 
he had become tired of his Whig Ministers, and conceiving • 

that he had effectually got rid of them, he was about to send a.u. 1834. 
for the Duke of Wellington or Sir Kobert Peel. 

A new Conservative Government would certainly then have 
been formed, but for the extraordinary promptitude, vigour, 
and daring exhibited by Brougham. He contrived to see all 
the other members of the Cabinet privately and separately, 
and he persuaded them that there was no occasion for them 
to retire ; that if Althorp would come back they could get 
on without Grey; that Althorp would come back for the 
public good if his original wish for the mitigation of the 
Coercion Bill were now complied with ; that they ought not 
to send in their resignations, and that the King — wliile the 
House of Commons, elected in the fervour of reform, still 
subsisted — could not force them out, to bring in the borough- 
mongers. They all agreed to " stand by their guns." 

Brougham has often told me that at this time he had Brougham's 
himself the offer of being Prime Minister, but that he positively the Pre- 
declined it, and named Melbourne. I strongly suspect that ^^'^^^^^P- 
this only appeared to him in a dream, and that the story is 
now believed by him only because it has been so often nar- 
rated by him. But certain it is that, either without any such 
offer to Brougham or after it was rejected, the offer was made 
to Melbourne, and that he, despising all pretended modesty, 
at once agreed to become Prime Minister, if the King's Lo^d Mel- 
sanction could be obtained. The Ejng was cruelly disap- mier. 
pointed ; but he was told by sensible Conservatives that the 
time for his emancipation had not yet arrived, and he gave 
his consent. 

A tragi-comical scene was acted in the House of Lords, when ^^^ ^^h'- 
the ministerial crisis was first noticed there. Lord Grey, un- 
informed of what had been passing among his colleagues since 
his own resignation had been accepted by the King, considered 
that Wliig mlo was over for the present, and he gave a very 
pathetic account of the different events which had led to this 
catastrophe. He said : — 

*'It was tho opinion of myself and all my colleagues, in con- 
sequence of previous communications, that it was indispensable 
VOL. VIII. 2 F 



434 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, the Act, witli all its clauses, should be renewed. I myself in- 
' structed the Attorney General to prepare a bill for its renewal, 
AD 1834 '^^ic^ is ^^^ 0^ t^® table of your Lordships' house.* I will once 
more take upon myself the responsibility of declaring, that in 
the present condition of Ireland, the passing of that bill is, in 
my opinion, indispensably necessary. But I am deprived of the 
assistance of my noble friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
the leading member of the Government in the Commons — the 
individual on whom my chief confidence rested— whom I con- 
sidered as my right arm ; and I feel it impossible for the Govern- 
ment to go on. I can no longer serve the Crown or the country 
to any useful purpose. On my receiving my noble friend's 
resignation, I saw no alternative, but felt impelled by irresistible 
necessity to tender my own to his Majesty at the same time. 
Those resignations have been accepted by his Majesty, and I 
now stand here discharging the duties of office only till such 
time as his Majesty shall be enabled to supply my place." 

He then took a valedictory review of his administration, 
showing that he had ever acted on the principles which on 
assuming office he had professed. 

The Tory peers cheered him loudly, their generosity being- 
warmed by the conviction that at the next meeting of the 
House they would walk across and take possession of the 
ministerial benches. But great was their consternation when 
up rose the Lord Chancellor, and, after a great deal of obscure 
periphrasis, thus distinctly spoke out : — 

" Of all men who ever held office, the present ministry would 
be the most without excuse if they could think of leaving the 
service of their King and country unless through an unavoidable 
necessity. This has ever been my opinion since I came into 
office ; it is my opinion to the present hour ; and I feel that I 
should not discharge my duty if, at all sacrifice of my comfort — 
at all abandonment of my own ease — at the destruction, if so it 
may be, of my own peace of mind, I do not stand by that 
gracious monarch and that country, whose cordial support I 
have received during the three years and a half I have had the 
honour to hold the Great Seal. After having said this, need I add 
that I have not tendered my resignation. [Loud laughter in the 



* I well remember receiving these instructions at the King's levee, nnd 
being txild that all the members of tlio Government, both in Ireland and in Eng- 
land, were of opinion that the Act must be renewed without any mitigation. 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 



435 



CHAP. 
V. 



A.D. 1834. 



house below the bar and on the steps of the throne]. Do your 
Lordships, or do any who listen to me, think that there is any- 
thing peculiarly merry or amusing in being a minister at the 
present conjuncture ? If they do, I invite them to take a part 
in the reconstruction of the Government. But they know 
better. If they are not aware of the annoyance which must 
attend such a situation, I am ; and I will tell these noble and 
laughing Lords, that such is my feeling with respect to office, 
that nothing but a sense of imperative duty could have kept me 
in office one hour after the resignation of my noble friend." * 

The following day, being interrogated by the Marquis of loth July. 
Londonderry and other peers, whether any person bad yet 
been intrusted with the formation of a new ministry, the 
Chancellor said : — 

" Neither interruptions, nor sneers, nor good-humoured jokes 
shall compel me to answer a question which duty to my sove- 
reign ought to make me refuse to answer. I should betray my 
duty to my sovereign if I were to answer it. If I knew nothing, 
I could answer it — easily answer it ; but because I do know, I 
refuse to answer; and I trust that your Lordships will think 
I am not guilty of taciturnity. [Repeated cheers of assent.] 
True, my Lords, I am not always taciturn ; I can defend myself 
when attacked, and I can defend my friends when my friends 
are attacked. But now silence is required, that I may not mar 
the public service and defeat the end which we all wish to see 
speedily accomplished and prevent his Majest}^ from obtaining 
that assistance to which he is entitled from all his loyal sub- 
jects." f 

In a few days Lord Melbourne appeared in the House as i7th July. 
First Minister, and Lord Brougham nominally as his Chan- 
cellor, but showing a disposition to be " Viceroy over him." 
Upon the announcement that the Irish Coercion Kenewal 
Bill depending in the Lords was to be dropped, and that a 
milder bill was to be introduced in the Commons, the Duke 
of Buckingham insisted — 

•' that the bill, abandoned when it stood for a third reading, was 
in accordance with the feelings of the country. Within a little 
week the noble Earl who had broucrht it in amidst the cheers 
of all his colleagues, had gone to his political sepulture ; and the 



Brougham 
" Viceroy 
over him.'' 



24 Hansard, 1312. 



t 25 Hansard, 5. 
2 F 2 



436 



REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 

V. 

A.D. 1834. 



Fautastic 
tricks of the 
Lord Chan- 
cellor. 



noble and learned Lord on the woolsack was ready to bring in 
another bill of a totally different complexion. The country 
would require an explanation from the noble Lord who thus 
acted in contradiction of his own speeches. The noble and 
learned Lord might think he had buried the noble Lord lately 
at the head of the Government, but he was also mistaken upon 
that point. The noble Earl's spirit would arise and scare 
some of the dignified occupants from their arm-chairs and inter- 
rupt the festivities of the noble and learned Lord on the wool- 
sack when he may attempt to forget the history with pottle- 
deep potations to the health and prosperity of the new adminis- 
tration." 

The Lord Chancellor. — " The noble Duke who has just addi'essed 
the House must be conversant with the dialect adopted in some 
alehouse, with which I am unacquainted. I have been in the 
habit of meeting the noble Duke elsewhere, but I have never 
had the honour of seeing him at the alehouse, where the noble 
Duke must have been so often in order to have picked up the 
terms of his slang dictionary." 

Cries of " Order " resounded from all sides, and a scene fol- 
lowed, which for the dignity of their Lordships' House, and 
the credit of all concerned in it, I wish to be forgotten.* 

The Session lasted only a month longer — during which 
Brougham dressed in his brief authority did play fantastic 
tricks, which if they did not make the angels weep, made the 
judicious grieve. Publicly pretending to regret, he privately 



* 25 Hansard, 49. In a publication of Lord Brougham, printed in the year 
1838, he gives the following account of this ministerial crisis : " This un- 
reasonable feeling of disappointment, and the unhappy necessity which 
existed for the Coercion Bill in Ireland, had excited a clamour against the 
Government of Lord Grey; and when that justly esteemed individual quitted 
office, the King had undoubtedly resolved to take advantage of this clamour, 
and would have at once changed his Ministers, had they given him an opening 
by hesitating whether or not they should continue to hold the Government 
after Lord Grey's secession. The declaration first communicated hy the Chan- 
cellor in private to his Majesty, and then on the same day made by him 
in the House of Lords, that the Ministers were quite willing to remain, 
disconcerted all such designs ; and the King could not take the step he 
so much wished until Lord Spencer's death in the following November gave, 
or seemed to give, a kind of ground (or rather a hollow pretext) for accom- 
plishing the same purpose. This was the very worst step, as it was the most 
inconsiderate, and proved for his own comfort the most liital that this 
excellent monarch ever took ; and he had been beforehand warned distinctly 
of the inevitable consequences, but he disregarded the warning."— Lor<i 
Brougham's Speeches, vol, iv. p. 90. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 437 

showed that he was delighted by the retirement of Lord CRAP. 
Grey. Lord Melbourne, whom he addressed and talked of ' 

by the name of " Lamb " or "William," he considered a mere a.d. i834. 
subordinate, although in the House of Lords he called him 
" my noble friend at the head of the Government." All the 
other members of the Cabinet, as they owed their continuance 
in office to him, he thought owed him allegiance, and he was 
disposed to treat them, if not as subjects, as schoolboys. 

To proclaim his complete " independence," when asked to 
give evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons 
appointed to inquire into the " Taxes on Knowledge," he 
eagerly expressed his willingness to attend, permission for 
this purpose being obtained from the House of Lords, and 
when examined he expressed opinions wholly at variance 
with those which had been advocated by his colleagues in 
debate, himself recommending the immediate and total repeal 
of the stamp duty on newspapers, of the tax upon advertise- 
ments, and of the duties upon paper of every description — 
which he denounced as impolitic, unjust, and oppressive — 
although he appeared before the Committee, not as a private 
individual but as Lord Chancellor. Indeed he came in his 
robes, attended by his mace bearer, purse bearer, and other 
officers, and in the presence of the members of the Committee 
he exercised his privilege of wearing his cocked hat, till after 
a little time he condescendingly uncovered. He likewise on 
this occasion blurted out some crude notions of his own about 
limiting the power of the Attorney General to file criminal 
informations.* 

But his greatest mistake was in behaving with hrusquerie even 
to the King. Nothing could excuse the unceremonious and 
dictatorial tone which he now assumed in the royal presence 
— making the Lords of the Bed Chamber stare — and evi- 
dently exciting surprise and disgust in the mind of the King. 
Entertaining stories were circulated of deliberations in the 
Cabinet, in which he denounced the hallucinations of his 
colleagues in very unmeasured terras ; but these rest on no 

♦ I remember complainirifj; of tliis to 1^)1(1 AI thorp and Lord Jolin 
Russell. They only lunghcd, and said "no harm followed from such 
extravagances." 



438 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, authority and were probably pure invention. As far as his 
' own proceedings were concerned he cared very little about 
A.D. 1834. the opinion of his colleagues, and he did not give himself the 
trouble to consult them. He laid upon the table of the House 
of Lords bills which he declared to be " Government bills " — 
some of very considerable importance, about which I certainly 
knew that no one member of the Government, in the Cabinet 
or out of the Cabinet, had been consulted. One of these was 
for entirely altering the appellate jurisdiction of the House 
of Lords, and introducing an organic change in the consti- 
tution.* 
The Chan- The busiuoss of the Session being over, we had the usual 
Fish dinner, ministerial fish dinner at Blackwall, which was celebrated 
this year with peculiar hilarity on account of the dangers we 
had run. Brougham attended and entered into our " high 
jinks " with much good humour. I thought of impeaching 
him for high treason by accrocMng upon the royal dignity ; 
but this would have been considered too near the truth for a 
joke, and I contented myself with renewing a motion which had 
been several times made and refused in the Lords and in the 
Commons, " That there be laid before this House a copy of the 
correspondence between the Lord High Chancellor of Great 
Britain and the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, touching the 
renewal of the Irish Coercion Act." Brougham, in resisting 
the motion in the Upper House, had declared that his letters 
to Lord Wellesley, in which the topic had been alluded to, 
were entirely of a private nature, and contained as much 
verse as prose. I urged this as a reason for granting the 
papers, as I had no doubt it would convince the world that 
our Chancellor w^ho equalled Cicero as an orator and. a philo- 
sopher excelled him as a poet — dealing in no such lines as 

" O fortunatam natam me consule Roinam." 



* 25 Hansard, 1255. This bill he professed to lay on the table on the 
14th of August, 1884. The prorogation following next day, it never was 
printed ; and I have been credibly informed that it never was drawn, a blank 
sheet of paper endorsed, "An Act to amend the Jurisdiction of the House 
of Lords in the hearing of Appeals and Writs of Error " representing it. But 
I myself with astonishment heard hitn detail the various clauses it was 
supi)03ed to contain, and which, if it had proceeded, my duty would have 
reciuired me to defend in the House of Commons. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 439 

He made a good answer by denying that such harharous CHAP, 
critics were qualified to estimate the beauty of his perform- ' 



ances. a.d. i834. 

On the loth of August the prorogation actually took place, 
when Brougham sat for the last time on the woolsack as 
Chancellor. He then not only had the usual confidence of 
absolute safety till Parliament should again assemble, but he 
was sanguine enough to anticipate a Cancellarian career as 
long as Lord Eldon's, the Tories being defunct as a party, 
and he himself being worshipped as the impersonation of 
Liberalism. 

In the King's Speech on this occasion prepared by Poor-Law 
Brougham, he justly took credit for two excellent bills which qI^i^Ii Cri- 
he had carried during the Session, — one for the Amendment minai Court 
of the Poor Laws, and the other for the Establishment of the 
Central Criminal Court.* The abuse of the fund intended 
by the 43rd of Elizabeth for the support of the destitute had 
been carried to such an excess as to demoralise the great 
mass of the lower orders, and to bring such a burden on the 
land as to render it in some parishes of no value to the 
nominal owners, who abandoned the cultivation of it that 
they might escape the assessment. Upon the recommenda- 
tion of a set of most intelligent commissioners to whom the 
subject was referred, a new system was devised, to be uni- 
formly enforced all over England and Wales, under the super- 
intendence of a Metropolitan Board, whereby provision was 
made for the really destitute, without pandering to idleness, 
or relaxing the springs of industry. This met with a vulgar 
opposition, and was denominated as cruel and unjust ; when 
Brougham rendered essential service in explaining its prin- 
ciples, and showing that it was for the benefit of the poor as 
well as the rich. He indiscreetly went too far in blaming all 
compulsory provision for the poor, and contending that mis- 
chievous eflects are produced by all public charities. These 
sentiments may perhaps be delended on abstract economical 
principles, but they are shocking to the vulgar, and they were 
afterwards very unscrujiulously repeated and perverted for 

♦ 25 Hansard, 1207. 



440 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, tlie purpose of casting obloquy upon the Whig party, from 

' whom the bill originated.* 
A.D. 1834. The other measure has had unmixed applause, and in 
fairness the merit of it ought to be almost exclusively im- 
puted to Brougham. t From ancient times there was a 
Court, called the Old Bailey, which met frequently throughout 
the year for the trial of all offences committed in the county 
of Middlesex and in the metropolis, which formerly did not 
extend beyond the ancient walls of the City of London. But 
large portions of the metropolis were now to be found in the 
counties of Surrey, Kent, and Essex, and persons charged 
with offences in them might lie seven or eight months in 
prison before being brought to trial. The evil had been 
frequently complained of, and plans had been proposed for 
extending the jurisdiction of the Old Bailey ; but I believe 
that had it not been for Brougham's energy the evil would 
have remained unremedied to the present hour. Assisted by 
myself and others who were only his instruments, he pre- 
pared a bill by which a population of above two millions and 
a half are subjected to the jurisdiction of the new court, 
and a tribunal is established of which the Lord Chancellor X 
and all the Judges are members, and which has ten sessions 
in the year for the trial of all offences within an area of 
about twenty miles from St. Paul's Cathedral. § 
Brougham's When Brougham, after the delivery of the King's speech, 
the 'Times.' had in his Majesty's name declared Parliament to be pro- 
rogued, he would have returned home perfectly satisfied with 

* See 25 Hansard, 435. The Duke of "Wellington, and all the respectable 
Tory leaders, supported the bill, but it was afterwards by their subordinates 
shamefully converted into a weapon of oflence at popular elections all 
over the kingdom, and down to 1841 materially added to Sir Eobert Peel's 
strength in the House of Commons. 

t 25 Hansard, 240. 

X I believe that Lord Chancellor Brougham, to give dignity to the Court, 
meant himself occasionally to preside in it, but fata aspera broke this 
purpose. 

§ This tribunal and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ought 
to perpetuate his fame. With his new Court of Bankruptcy he was not 
so lucky, for he created four Judges to sit all the year round for the purpose 
of doing business, which in experience it was found might easily be done 
by one Judge in a few days. So the Court of Banlcruptcy fell with its 
founder. 



LIFE OF LOKD BROUGHAM. 441 

himself and with all the world, had it not been for the war CHAP. 
raging between him and the * Times ' newspaper. ' 

Till about Easter 1834 Brougham had the full favour of a.b. i834. 
the * Thunderer,'* and was supposed himself to be allowed to 
hurl thunderbolts under the guise of the dread Divinity. 
Such paragTaphs as the following were still frequently to be 
read in the ^ Times.' 

" The attack on the Chancellor respecting the late Mr. James 
Brougham's sinecure is one of the almost daily instances of the 
mode in which the enemies of the Chancellor conduct their 
opposition to that eminent man." 

" The dullest fag does not work so hard as the man even his 
enemies acknowledge to be the most accomplished and brilliant 
intellect of his age and country." 

" We present to our readers an abridgment of the return of 
the state of business in the Court of Chancery, moved for in the 
House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor, and no doubt authentic, 
being made under his superintendence. What an answer does 
this abridgment of a parliamentary paper delivered this morning 
make to the calumniators of the Lord Chancellor ! " 

But he had now a private quarrel with Barnes the editor, 
who thought himself slighted by him, and he was first 
attacked for his speech in support of the new Poor Law, 
against which Mr. Walter, the chief proprietor of the news- 
paper, had a strong prejudice, and which the newspaper con- 
tinued for years systematically and vehemently to oppose. 

But what completed the rupture and made it irreparable 
was Brougham's carelessness in allowing to come to the 
knowledge of the * Times,' the following " secret and con- 
fidential " letter he received one morning when sitting on the 
bench in the Court of Chancery in Lincoln's Inn Hall. 

" Dear Brougham, 

" AVhat I want to see you about is the * Times,' whether we 
are to make war on it or come to terms. 

" Yours ever, 

Althorp." 

This Brougliam read during the argument, — answered 
immediately and tore up — throwing away the fragments. 

♦ Then the designation of the ' Times.' 



442 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. These fragments were picked up by a shorthand writer, put 
' together and carried next day to the office of the * Times.' 
A.D. 1834. It SO happened that this very day some information which 
the editor asked from the Government was abruptly refused. 
The inference drawn was that by the Chancellor's advice a 
determination had been formed by the Government to make 
war on the ^ Times,' and the ' Times' determined to make 
war upon Brougham, sparing for a while at least the main 
body of his colleagues. Accordingly, while a general support 
was given to Lord Melbourne's Government, a series of bitter 
attacks began upon the devoted Chancellor. 

The disruption of the Cabinet by the retirement of Lord 
Stanley, Sir James Graham, Lord Kipon, and the Duke of 
Eichmond, having taken place about this time, a party, 
headed by the * Times,' wished that Lord Durham should be 
introduced into the Cabinet, but were disappointed, and the 
blame was thrown on the Chancellor, who was known to look 
upon him with jealousy. Accordingly this sly paragraph 
appears in the * Times ' : — 

*' It is insinuated that the Lord Chancellor is at the bottom 
of the exclusion of Lord Durham. Every friend of the noble 
and learned Lord must be impatient, as we are, to meet this 
with a flat denial." 

9th June. The ' Timos ' next tries in a long article to prove that the 

Chancellor has been guilty of inconsistency by agreeing to 
the "Appropriation Clause," having said within a year that 
" as to the Catholic Church receiving any of this possible 
surplus, he should as much oppose that as any of their 
Lordships." What is worse, they most groundlessly and 
falsely imputed to him the habit of intemperate drinking. 

In a subsequent number the following question is put, " Is 
it not melancholy that this noble and learned Lord, like a 
nisi prius advocate, exhibits an inconsistency so palpable, and 
a levity of political principle so all-but-pra3ternatural ? " And 
they ask him to compare his speech of July 4, and that of 
last Thursday, July 17, when the Duke of Wellington told 
him that it would take more than even the ingenuity of the 
noble and learned Lord himself to explain these contra- 
dictions. 



LIFE OF LOKD BROUGHAM. 443 

On Lord Grey's resignation/ the ' Times ' ridiculed the CB^P. 

Chancellor's assertion that the Government still subsisted; 

" because cutting a man's head off involves the death of the a.d. 1834. 
body. Decapitation is death." 

Thus they express their regret for the course they are now 
pursuing : — 

" We have stood by him for fifteen years, but are now com- 
pelled to throw him over." 

"Lord Durham ought to know the Chancellor by this time. 2oth July. 
He it was w^ho excluded him from the Cabinet. Lord Melbourne 
will find him out. The honest men of the community are an 
overmatch for the knaves." 

" The notion people have is, that the Lord Chancellor goes I6th Aug. 
down to the House to have some fun with the old ladies. He 
appears like a young pickle turning the house out of window, 
quizzing his great grandmother and great aunts, making sport 
of their antique habits, upsetting their revered china, and 
roasting the parrot. And after he is tired, and the public some- 
what scandalised at his amusing himself thus, out he comes 
with a seimon professing his duty and profound reverence and 
respect." 

" It was Lord Brougham's correspondence with Lord Wellesley 
behind his back that destroyed Lord Grey's Government. For 
confirmation we apply to Lord Grey's valedictory speech." 

"For some months past Lord Brougham has been under a 19th Aug. 
morbid excitement, seldom evinced by those of his Majesty's sub- 
jects who are suffered to remain masters of their own actions." 

This was the beginning of a long leader continued in the 
same strain. 

After being almost suffocated by newspaper praise, he could 
very ill brook these attacks. Meeting Lord Melbourne one 
day at the King's levee, I said to him : — " What is the matter 
uith your Chancellor this morning? He seems very much 
disturbed." Lord M. — " Have you not seen this morning's 
* Times'?" C.--"No; not^L" Lord ill — " Another 
Brouf/hamic, hinting that he is out of his mind, exaggerating 
his pecuUarities, vilipending his rhetoric, and, above all, 
asserting tliat there are heavy and increasing arrears in the 
Court of Chancery. He takes these attacks most seriously to 
heart, and I may really say that they drive him mad. I am 



444 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CRAP. yQYj uneasy about him, and I am very glad that the session 

is so near its end." 

A.D. 1834. While we were talking about him, Brougham came up 
to us, and, after some little persiflage respecting another 
matter, took me aside and said that I must assist him that 
very night in the House of Commons, by showing that 
there were no arrears in the Court of Chancery, or in the 
House of Lords' appeals. I expressed my willingness, if 
he would furnish me with proper materials. He said, " I 
will instantly send you a statistical statement on which you 
may rely." 

I soon received a packet containing my instructions, and 

made a speech, of which I take the following specimen from 

Hansard : — 

Sir John The Attorney General.-^^'- 1 rise for the purpose of moving for 

eiSy^on^ certain returns from the Court of Chancery, the result of which 

the Lord I am sure will give the greatest satisfaction to the House and 

■^\h^^H*'^ to the country. It is of importance to the public that they 

of Com- should be truly informed of the manner in which judicial 

mons. business is disposed of; and even to the Judges themselves it 

is but fair that a statement should be made, in order that 

where arrears exist a stimulus to exertion may be furnished ; 

and where there are no arrears an estimate may be formed of 

the attention and energy which have produced this satisfactory 

result. It gives me much pleasure to announce that in the 

Court of Chancery there are now no arrears subsisting — which I 

believe could never be so effectually said since the time of Sir 

Thomas More. Nor does this arise from any falling off in the 

business of the Court, because in fact it has been progressively 

increasing." 

Then follows a long tabular statement professing to come 
from the files of the Court of Chancery. 

" With respect to the House of Lords, the account will be 
equally satisfactory; for, whatever honourable members here 
may think of the political proceedings of their Lordships during 
the present session, their judicial labours are worthy of all 
praise. In fact, although there have formerly been arrears in the 
House of Lords that it required years to clear off, there is at pre- 
sent no arrear whatever; and I trust that the example thus 
given by the Court of last resort will have a salutary effect on 
all inferior tribunals in the realm." 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 445 

The statement was received with prodigious applause, and CHAP. 
the returns to verify it were immediately ordered. ' 



But the following day a Chancery barrister rose, and com- a.d. 1834. 
plained of the Attorney General — 

*' ATho in moYing for certain returns had made comparisons 
between the amount of business done by the present Lord Chan- 
cellor and his predecessors, which cast a reflexion on great men 
now no more, and were calculated exceedingly to mislead the 
public. The fact was that there were upwards of 200 cases 
undisposed of in the Court of Chancery at the present moment, 
and in the House of Lords the arrear was still more consider- 
able." 

The Attorney General could only say that 

" He had every reason to believe that the returns ordered 
would verify his statement, and that he had no intention of 
reflecting upon any one." 

This conversation occurred just before the Black Eod 
appeared to summon the Commons for the prorogation, 
and, fortunately or unfortunately, the order for the returns 
dropped, so that I was never able to ascertain whether my 
instructions exactly corresponded with the fact.* 

Brougham himself certainly had a sincere conviction that 
he was fully competent not only to perform all the duties of 
Lord Chancellor without assistance, in a manner Avhich never 
liad been accomplished before, but at the same time volun- 
tarily to undertake extra-official labours in literature and 
science. To appease a class of reformers who were clamorous 
for the separation of the judicial and political functions 
of the Lord Chancellor, he had, at the commencement of 
tlie last session, laid on the table of the House of Lords 
a bill for that purpose ; but he never took farther notice 
of it till the very night when the Attorney General was 
charged to eulogise him in the House of Commons. 
Having introduced liis embyro bill for altering the appel- 
late jurisdiction of the House, he concluded with this testi- 
mony in his own favour u[)on the vexed question wliether 
there still remained any arrears in the Court of Chan- 
cery :— 

♦ 25 Ilausard, 1200, 1201). 



446 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 



A.D. 1834. 



15th Aug. 
Brougham 
at the pro- 
rogation. 



His " Pro- 
gress " in 
Scotland. 



" Before I sit down, my Lords, I wish to state my reason for 
not proceeding with my bill for separating the judicial and poli- 
tical functions of the Lord Chancellor. When I came to con- 
sider the subject at Easter, I found that I had no arrears of 
judicial business, and therefore T felt that, with respect to that 
bill, I had no ground to stand upon." * 

On the day of the prorogation the King, who had not the 
art of concealing his feelings, seemed to me to look rather 
sternly when receiving his speech from the kneeling Chan- 
cellor, and whispering to him the order to prorogue till the 
25th of September ; but this might only be my fancy. When 
his Majesty had set out on his return to the palace, I had 
the honour of an interview with the Chancellor in his private 
room, and I found him in the most exuberant spirits. He 
graciously condescended to thank me for what I had said of 
him in the House of Commons, and expressed a confident 
hope that the calumnies of the " rascally ' Times ' " were 
now effectually silenced. He then announced to me his 
approaching tour in Scotland. " Call it Progress," said I. 

A royal Progress it certainly turned out to be. At this 
epoch Brougham's reputation in Scotland was much greater 
than ever had been Lord Mansfield's or Lord Loughborough's 
— the two Scotsmen who, having changed their domicile to 
England, had reflected the brightest splendour on their native 
country. He was considered not only a profound lawyer, 
who had accomplished judicial feats beyond example, but as 
the great regenerator of the age, by his exertions for the 
abolition of slavery, for the spread of education, for the reform 
of the law, and above all for the emancipation of Scotland 
from political thraldom. There can be no doubt that the 
situation of North Britons with respect to parliamentary 
representation had been most degrading ; and they had given 
implicit credit to pamphlets and articles in newspapers, 
imputing to the Lord Chancellor the chief merit of destroying 
the corrupt little self-elected municipalities, and the fraudu- 
lent sujperiorities in counties, wliich had made North Britain 
one rotten borough, with the power of returning 45 members 
to the House of Commons. Brougham's supposed ascendancy 



* 25 Hansard, 1260. 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 447 

was viewed with pride and exultation by my countrymen, CHAP, 
when they considered that he was born and bred among them. ' 

Those admitted to familiar intimacy with him might discover a.d. iSo-i. 
failings and weaknesses which prevented us from worshipping 
him ; but to the distant Caledonians, who judged him only 
by what they read, he was a hero or a demigod. 

"Various supplications were offered up to him from private 
individuals and public bodies, praying that he would revisit 
the scenes of his youth, and receive the homage of a grateful 
nation. An objection was started by the Purse-bearer and 
other officers to the emigration of the Great Seal. The 
ancient law says that the Clavis Begni must always be 
in the personal custody of the Lord Chancellor, and that 
it must be kept and used within the realm of England. 
One of the articles of impeachment against Cardinal Wolsey 
was that he had carried it to Calais. But this difficulty 
was surmounted by the consideration that since the Union 
it is the Great Seal of Great Britain, and that John o' Groat's 
House, should it even be carried thither, is within the 
kingdom. 

Brougham's inclination to show himself to admirers who 
thus displayed their noted ])erfervidum ingenium was quick- 
ened by intelligence that Lord Grey had actually accepted 
an invitation to a public banquet to be given to him at 
Edinburgh. The ruling passion immediately operated upon 
him, and he was resolved to show that he had more popu- 
larity there than the supposed father of the^ Keform Bill, 
or, in common phrase, to tahe the luincl out of Lord Greys 
sails. 

It was announced that the Lord Chancellor would visit 
both tlie Lowlands and the Highlands of Scotland, and take 
up his abode for some days in the northern metroi)olis. The 
news spread more rapidly than if carried from glen to glen 
by the fiery cross ; and tar barrels for beacon fires, devices 
for illuminations, worm-eaten muskets and rusty claymores 
were put in requisition to do him honour. Lord Provosts, 
Lord Rectors, and sheriffs princii)al, sherifis depute, iind 
sheriffs substitute, set their wits to work to pen addresses iu 
his praise. As he had not yet acquired the faculty of ubiquity 



448 REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, the scheme adopted was that he should visit the castles of a 
' few great chieftains; that he should there receive deputa- 



A.D. 1834. tions from the surrounding counties and corporations ; that 
in moving rapidly from one such castle to another, he should 
stop for a few hours at the populous towns between them ; 
and that, partaking of a collation, he should then and there 
make suitable speeches in return for the compliments 
showered down upon him. 

When he arrived at Lancaster, on his way to Scotland, he 
was pleased to find that the assizes were going on there, and 
that this was the night for holding the Grand Court, in which 
the Junior presided for the trial of all bar offences. By 
rights, he ought to have dined with the Judges, but he 
expected much more fun with his old associates, and he sent 
them an intimation that he proposed to take his seat in the 
court as an ancient member of the circuit. This of course 
caused great joy, and a deputation immediately waited upon 
him to invite him to the honours of the sitting. 

The carouse, as might have been expected, was the 
merriest ever known on the Northern Circuit. The Lord 
High Chancellor dropped all the proud trappings of office ; 
himself sang two French cliansons a hoire, and w^as the life 
of the company. He declared (and j)erhaps for the moment 
believed in his own sincerity) how sorry he was that he 
had ever left the circuit, and wished that he might ex- 
change the Great Seal for a nisi prius brief, and the drowsy 
Lords over whom he was condemned to preside for the 
choice spirits with whom he had now the happiness to fra- 
ternize. His demeanour was universally allowed to be 
most amiable and most becoming. While the barristers did 
whatever they could to humour him and to draw him out, 
they all showed a certain deference for him till a junior, hot 
with the Tuscan grape, proposed that his majesty should 
resume his royal title of Henry IX., and that they should, 
one by one, come and do homage to him as the peers did at 
the coronation to WiUiam lY. He thought it was time to 
be gone, so he exclaimed : — 

" lif^rpy low, lie down, 

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 449 

He then took leave, liurried to his hotel, and, the sun CHAP, 
being up, he ordered his carriage and pursued his journey 



Having passed a day at Brougham Hall, that he might a.d. 1834. 
visit his beloved mother, whom in all states of mind he duly 
honoured, he posted off for the North, and crossed the border 
at Gretna Green. His first resting-place was Hamilton 
Palace, in the county of Eenfrew, where he was received by 
him who used to sign himself "H. B. and C." Hamilton, 
Brandon, and Chatelherault, Duke in three kingdoms, Scot- 
land, England, and France. I have no authentic account 
of what passed on this occasion, except that the Chancellor 
was here made a burgess of the ancient burgh of Hamilton. 
Xo doubt there was a suitable speech by the Provost, followed 
by a suitable answer from the Chancellor, but they have 
perished. If I were to indulge in probable conjecture as to 
the speech of his host, I might say, with little risk of being 
wrong, that the old Duke, with the most high-bred politeness 
hinting at the royal blood in his veins, tried to convince his 
audience that the union between England and Scotland 
ought to be repealed, as degrading and injurious to the latter 
kingdom.* 

The first authentic information I have obtained of the 
Chancellor's progress in Scotland, is his visit at Taymouth 
Castle, the seat of the Marquess of Breadalbane. When he 
approached Killin, at the head of Loch Tay, a salute of 
twenty-one guns announced that he had entered " the country 
of the Campbells." There was a gathering of the clan, and 
above a thousand men in tartan plaids and philibegs were 
drawn up in military array, carrying banners not only with 
the boar's head, the gyronny of eight, and the lymphad 
of Lorn, but likewise inscriptions celebrating the exploits of 
their illustrious guest. An aquatic procession then took 
place from one extremity of Loch Tay to the other, mucli 
grander than Roderick Dim's, as described in the Lady of the 

* I had the honour of his Grace's acquaintnnco, and have often heard hiia 
converse, but seldom on any other topics. He was the only Scotch Repealer 
I ever met with, but ho was more sincere than Daniel OConnell. His ancestor 
havinj^ been declared by the Scottish Parliament next heir to the Crown 
failing Queen Mary and lier issue, he had an indistinct notion that ho 
had a better claim to it than the descendant of a Duke of Brunswick. 
VOL. VIII. 2 G 



450 REIGlSr OF WILLIAM IV. 

^^P- Lake, pipers from far and near playing favourite pibrochs. 
When they reached the Castle there was another royal salute 



A.D. 1834. from a battery at a little distance, and the Marquess, with his 
tail on, delivered an address, the burthen of which was that 
all the glory conferred in former times on different branches 
of the Campbells by visits from Kings of Scotland, whether 
Macalpines, Bruces, or Stuarts, was eclipsed by this visit from 
one of the greatest of lawyers, orators, and patriots, who, from 
his efforts in framing and carrying the Eeform Bill, might 
well be called the "Liberator of Scotland." Brouo:ham, in 
answer, was eloquent upon what the Campbells had done 
in the field — still more in the cause of civil and religious 
liberty — exploits which all call to mind when they hear 
" The Campbells are coming ;" and he dwelt particularly on 
the patriotism of the present chief of Breadalbane. 

By referring to the newspapers of that time I might fill a 
volume with similar addresses and answers, as the Chancellor 
proceeded to different noblemen's houses, and visited Perth, 
Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen, and Dundee on his way. At 
Eothiemurchus, then the residence of the Dowager Duchess of 
Bedford, he found a large party of English ladies, with whom 
he romped so familiarly that, to be revenged on him, they 
stole the Great Seal, and hid it where neither he nor his 
attendants could discover it. This was rather a serious 
practical joke, for without the Great Seal the Government is 
at a stand-still ; the Great Seal alone gives validity to the 
most important acts of the executive Government, and every 
grant in the Sovereign's name, bearing the impression of it, 
is in point of law conclusively authentic. At last he was in 
such real distress about it that the ladies took compassion 
upon him, assured him it was in the drawing-room, and that 
he might find it blindfolded, one of them assisting him by 
playing loud on the piano when he approached it. He was 
blindfolded accordingly, and by the hints which the piano gave 
him, he, in due time, dragged the bauble from a tea-chest. 
This was very harmless sport ; but unfortunately exaggerated 
accounts of it were sent to a lady in waiting at Windsor 
Castle, and she exaggerating these accounts still farther 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 451 

in relating tliem to the royal circle- there, they did much CHAP, 
mischief. 



His speech on receiving the freedom of the city of Inver- a.d. i834. 
ness excited most notice, and I shall therefore give a few 
extracts from it. After, as usual, modestly accounting for 
his enthusiastic reception from "the circumstance that he 
had the honour of serving a monarch who reigned in the 
hearts of his subjects," he said : — 

" to find that he lives in the hearts of his loyal subjects inhabit- 
ing this ancient and important capital of the Highlands, as it has 
afforded me pure and unmixed satisfaction, will, I am confident, 
be so received by his Majesty when I tell him (as I will do by 
this night's post) of such a gratifying manifestation." 

Then referring to the complaints against the Government 
for not " going ahead," he said : — 

" My own opinion is that we have done too much rather than 
too little. By passing the new Poor-law, were the Government 
to do nothing more for ten years to come, they would have de- 
served well of the country. If we did little in the last session, 
I fear we shall do less in the next. But what we do will be done 
well, because it will be done carefully." 

A loud clamour was raised by the expressions in this 
speech about the Government having done too much and 
being about to do less. Taken with the context, they were 
merely a just rebuke to the ultra-Kadicals, who seemed to 
think that however much had been done, as much remained 
to be done as if nothing had been done, and that a Session 
without a revolution was a lost Session. But I fear that 
nothing can be said in excuse of the rhodomontade about the 
Invernessians showing their loyalty to the King by applaud- 
ing the Keeper of his Conscience, and the assurance that he 
would by that night's post convey the happy tidings to his 
.Majesty. The epistolary correspondence of the tourist with 
his IMajesty, liowever, was not (as many suspected) a mere 
invention. The following communication to me is from a 
valued friend, on whose honour and accuracy entire reliance 
may be placed : — 

" The Inverness letter to King William was written over ;i 



G '1 



A.D. 1834. 



452 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, tumbler of whisky toddy, in the presence of a Mr. MacPherson, 
who told me the fact. The goodnatured Chancellor had espied 
him (Lord Brougham, to this day, has wonderfully fine sight, and 
can distinguish faces quicker than most men), I say his Lordship 
detected the face of MacPherson, in the crowd of listeners, as that 
of an old College acquaintance at Edinburgh. He sent for him. 
In the evening MacPherson found the Chancellor alone in the 
best room, of course, of Wilson's Caledonian Hotel. The Great 
Seal was drinking punch, and forthwith commanded a tumbler 
to be brought for MacPherson. The two passed the evening, or 
a considerable part of it, together. Now MacPherson told me 
that, when the hour for the despatch of the South post was 
approaching, Lord Brougham said he had to write to the King 
about that day's proceedings ; but that it would not take him 
long, and he desired MacPherson to go on with his toddy. The 
Chancellor accordingly went to a side-table, and there indited 
the fatal missive which was soon to prove the chief instrument 
of his downfall. From what MacPherson said, I fancy it could 
not have been a long epistle. But the notion of writing to the 
King at all on such a subject was an absurdity, into which Lord 
Brougham was drawn by his own argument in the morning, 
that the honours he had received belonged truly to the gracious 
Prince he had served for nearly four years, and consequently it 
followed logically enough that the King had a right to be exactly 
apprised of them." 

By the time he reached Aberdeen the comments in the 
newspapers on his Inverness speech seem to have excited him 
almost to fury, and he threatened the printers, as he de- 
risively called the " gentlemen of the Press," with bis utmost 
vengeance. In addressing the Aberdonians, he said : — 

" You will be all well aware of the absurd and stupid and 
indefensible attacks which have been showered against me, not 
one word of which is true or deserved. But," said the Chan- 
cellor, in an impassioned manner, "a day of retribution is at 
hand ; it approaches. I have allowed certain persons to go on. 
They have gone on. The net is enclosed around them, and they 
shall soon be held up to ridicule and to scorn, aye and perhaps 
to punishment." 

'* Perhaps," said the ' Times,' "he is going to write to the 
King without the loss of a single post." * 

* His speeches after Inverness, however, were silent as (o Government having 
done too much, and were more in the eo-ahead strain, which hiduced the 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 453 

These ebullitions certainly produced a very unfavourable CHAP. 

effect upon the public mind, and I believe that O'Connell ' 

could get no one to take the wager which he thus publicly a.d. i834. 
offered in a "Letter to the People of Ireland": — 

" I pay very little attention to anything Lord Brougham says. 
He makes a greater number of foolish speeches than any other 
man of the present generation. There may be more nonsense in 
some one speech of another person ; but in the number, the mul- 
titude of foolish speeches, Lord Brougham has it hollow, 
would start him ten to one — ay, fifty to one — ^in talking non- 
sense and flatly contradicting himself, against any prattler now 
living." * 

Whether Brougham continued to write to the King by 
every post, giving an account of his progress, or what specific 
effect these letters produced, I have not been able to learn, 
but, according to authentic information, King William, who 
had been much offended by the Chancellor's demeanour since 
the resignation of Lord Grey, had looked upon his journey to 
Scotland with amazement and consternation, and had com- 
plained to Lord Melbourne of some of his speeches as demo- 
cratical. It was even said that his Majesty had declared 
to others with whom he conversed more freely, that " He 
could not account for the Chancellor clandestinely running 
away with the Great Seal beyond the jurisdiction of the 
Court of Chancery, except upon the supposition that he was 
oat of his mind, of which there had for some time been 
strong symptoms." t 

' Times ' to remark, " The Lord Chancellor has bolted at Aberdeen and 
Dundee all that he had said at Inverness without a single wry face." 

* Soon after a jiublic dinner was given at Glasgow to his rival, Lord 
Durham, who then assailed Brougham very bitterly, and (as was reported ) 
with great approbation. In drawing a comparison between him and Lord 
Melbourne, the orator observed, laying his empliasis so as that he could not 
be misunderstood, " Lord Mdhourne is incapable of treachery or intrigue." 
Here there was a general apprehension that the roof would come down from 
the shouts of applause. — See * Times' 

t I certainly know that William IV. had a strong opinion that no English 
Judge could lawfully go 1>eyond the realm of England without the express 
personal permission of the King. He once caused Lord Abingc-r, wlun C.IJ. 
of the Exchequer, to be reprimanded for doing so; and this doctrine had been 
so traditionally estiblisheil at Court that when I myself became a Judge, 
I did not venture upon a tour \o lUily till I had first obtained the Queen a 



454 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
V. 



A.D. 1834. 

The Grey 
Festival. 



The day appointed for the Grey Festival was now at hand, 
and there were various speculations as to the course which 
Brougham would take respecting it. The general opinion 
was that he would feign some sudden call to London. Lord 
Grey was to be accompanied by Lady Grey and his daughters, 
who in loud terms accused Brougham of having treacherously 
caused the late change of Government, and had hitherto 
refused to see him since the event happened. Their theory 
was that Brougham, wishing to get rid of Lord Grey as 
Prime Minister, purposely made the place irksome and 
annoying to him, and that having heard of Lord Grey's 
threats of resigning, he had designedly got up the intrigue 
about the renewal of the Coercion Bill, to induce him, by 
a fresh disgust, to carry his threat into execution. Brougham 
knew that no proof could be adduced to support the charge, 
and he thought that his most politic plan would be to face it 
and so to put it down. 

The whole Grey family were to be the guests of Sir John 
Dalrymple (afterwards Earl of Stair), at Oxenford Castle, 
near Edinburgh, and Brougham, who had been an old friend 
of Sir John, boldly wrote to him to say that, if it was con- 
venient for him and Lady Adamina,* he should be glad 
to take up his quarters at Oxenford Castle during the 
approaching solemnity at Edinburgh, which he felt* bound to 
attend from his profound respect for Lord Grey, whose retire- 
ment from ofSce he so deeply deplored. Sir John, who, 
living in the country, was not aware of the actual relations 
between Brougham and the Greys, answered that he should 
be delighted with his company. The Greys did not at all 
know whom they were to meet at Oxenford till they had 
arrived there, and the arrangement which had been made 
could not be altered. Being then member for the city of Edin- 
burgh, I had been invited to Oxenford to join Lord Grey's 
cortege. Well aware of the abhorrence in which Brougham 

consent, although I hold it to bo quite clear that there is no such prerogative. 
A Judge may go where he likes, either in or out of tlie realm, without any 
Royal consent, if he does not neglect his judicial duties; and if ho docs, 
the consent of tlie Crown would be no excuse for him. 

* Lady Adamiua Dalrymple, sister of the Earl of Campcrdown. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 455 

was held by the Grey family, I never was so much astonished CHAP 
as when I heard that Brougham was to sit down at table with ' 

them there, and to pass the night under the same roof. He ^.d. 1834. 
was very late in appearing, and we had all been assembled in 
the drawing-room expecting him. My heart beat violently 
as often as any noise arose that might indicate his approach. 
At last a servant opened the door and announced " The Lord 
Chancellor." I must say that his demeanour was noble and 
grand. Without any approach to presumption or vulgar 
familiarity, in an easy, frank, natural manner, he laid hold 
of the hand of Lord Grey, who, though stiff and stately, could 
not draw it back or refuse to acknowledge his salutation. He 
then most respectfully, but without betraying any conscious- 
ness of there being any misunderstanding between them, paid 
his court to Lady Grey and actually engaged her in con- 
versation, beginning with some complimentary expressions 
about the festival to be celebrated on the morrow. The 
two daughters, the Ladies Grey, long avoided him by every 
manoeuvre they could resort to, but, before the evening 
was over, he had got them both to talk to him about the 
place where they were to be stationed next day so that 
they might best see and hear their papa. In his conver- 
sation he seemed anxiously desirous that the festival should 
be devoted exclusively to the honour of Lord Grey, and 
should be so conducted as most to gratify the feelings of 
all connected with him. 

Next day, however, at the public dinner, his object evidently 
was to make himself the most conspicuous object — improving 
the opportunity to glorify himself and to assail his opponents. 
In responding to the toast of " his Majesty's Ministers," 
which was received with much applause, he began with the 
praise of his Eoyal Correspondent : — 

" I owe this expression from you, not by any means so much 
to any personal deserts of my own, as to the accidental circum- 
stance, but to mo most honourable, of having the pride and grati- 
fication to serve tliat great and gracious l^rince who lives in the 
hearts of his people, and who for all the services he has rendered 
his country, and for his honest, straightforward and undeviating 



456 REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



V. 

A.D. 1834, 



CHAP, patronage of the best rights and interests of that country, has well 
earned the unparalleled praise bestowed on him so justly and 
without any exaggeration by your noble Chairman, ' that none 
of his predecessors ever more richly deserved the affections and 
gratitude of his subjects.' " 

He next alluded to " the irreparable loss which his Majesty's 
Ministers had lately sustained in the chief, to whose great 
services this most splendid and unparalleled national testi- 
monial had been so appropriately given." Then he came to 
the more agreeable topic of himself, when he really grew 
sincere, earnest, eloquent, and impressive : — 

" My fellow-citizens of Edinburgh, after having been four years 
a Minister, tliese hands are dean. In taking office, and holding it, 
and retaining it, I have sacrificed no feeling of a public nature ; 
I have deserted no friend ; I have forfeited no pledge ; I have 
done no job ; I have promoted no unworthy man to the best of 
my knowledge ; I have stood in the way of no man's fair preten- 
sions to promotion ; I have not abused my patronage ; I have not 
abused the ear of my master ; and I have not deserted the people." 

In this strain he went on for near half-an-hour, declaring 
his purpose never to be deterred by the clamour of the 
people, more than by the frown of the Prince, from doing his 
duty to the Prince and to the people. He then enumerated 
the great measm^es which the Government had carried through 
since the passing of the Keform Bill — particularly the abo- 
lition of slavery. " I am ready," said he, " to take on my 
head singly, if necessary, the undivided responsibility of 
making the slave free." Of the credit of reforming the 
Church Establishment in Ireland he only claimed a share — 
but he exclusively appropriated to himself the reform of "the 
great nest of abuse, the Court of Chancery." He next fell 
foul of the Earl of Durham and others who had censured 
some of his Conservative speeches on his ^'' progress," and 
who, instead of thinking that the Whigs had gone too far, as 
Brougham had hinted, urged theui still to advance till all 
grievances should be redressed : — 

" We shall go on," said he, *' heedless of the attacks of those 
hast}^ spirits. The}' are men of great honesty, of much zeal, and 



A.D. 1884. 



LIFE OF LOKD BEOUGHAM. 457 

of no reflection at all. They would travel towards their object ; but CHAP. 
they are in such a hurry to set out, and to get there three minutes 
earlier than ourselves, that they will not wait to put the linch- 
pins into the wheel. They would go on a voyage of discovery to 
unknown regions, but would not tarry to look whether the com- 
pass is on board. When they see the port in view, they will not 
wait for five minutes to go round by the safe channel to it, but 
dash in among breakers, and run the vessel ashore." 

He at last concluded with an account of his " progress," for 
the purpose of showing that there was no reaction in favour 
of Toryism : — 

"I can say most conscientiously and most correctly that I have 
not seen one single specimen of reaction all over Scotland ; and 
I have traversed it to within forty miles of John O'G roat's House, 
and in all directions, highland and lowland, agricultural, com- 
mercial, and manufacturing." * 

The same night I sat by him at supper at Lord Jeffrey's, 
where a large party of the most delightful companions I have 
ever associated with, the Edinburgh lawyers of a now by- 
gone generation, were assembled to meet him. We sat up 
till long after cock-crow, and Brougham was most good- 
natured and agreeable, making us all forget for a time his 
waywardness. He certainly engrossed by far the largest 
share of the talk, but every one by quickly watching an 
opportunity might put in a wise saw or a joke, and we all 
parted pleased with ourselves and with him. Nodes coenwque 
Deiim ! 

I am sorry to say that this was the last reciprocation of 
cordiality between Brougham and myself till more than ten 
long years had elapsed. He now began and long continued 
(without any fault of mine, as far as I am aware) to view me 
with jealousy, suspicion, and ill-will, and to do everything in 
his power to thwart my plans and to injure my prospects. 

Immediately after the '* Grey Festival " he set off for 
London, and he soon lieard of the deatli of Sir John Leach, 
the blaster of the Rolls. This event threw him into great 
perplexity. In the common course, I, as Attorney General, 

* Lord Brouj^lmm'w Speeches, vol. iv. p. 77. 



458 REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, ought to have liad the offer of succeeding to the vacancy. 
' But the notion of my becoming an Equity Judge was very 
A.D. 1834. distasteful to him. He told Melbourne that he himself being 
Brougham from the Common Law bar, and Lyndhurst the Chief Baron, 
Sy\is pi- "tlien an Equity Judge, being from the Common Law bar, it 
sitionas would give great dissatisfaction if the third great Equity 
by making Judge Were likewise taken from the Common Law bar. So 
Master of B^pys was appointed Master of the Eolls. I contented myself 
the Rolls, with protesting against the precedent, knowing that plausible 
reasons might be given for it. Brougham felt that he had 
injured me, and he hated me accordingly. But ere long he 
found himself " the engineer hoist with his own petard." 
November. On the first day of next Michaelmas Term he held his 
Dismissal of levcc with great glee ; but, alas ! in little more than a week, 
Ministers, whou I was walking down to the Court of King's Bench and 
crossing Palace-yard, the Lord Chancellor's carriage drove 
by, carrying him who was then doomed to be an Ex-Chan- 
cellor for the rest of his days. Seeing me he pulled the 
check-string, and when I stepped up he exclaimed, "How 
do you. do. Sir John — Attorney General no longer — we are 
all out. The Duke of Wellington is with the King con- 
cocting a new Government." And so he passed on to take 
leave of the Chancery bar, as he then beheved for a short 
space, but, as it proved, for ever. 
Brougham's In the robing-room I found the * Times' newspaper, con- 
acrSt taining an account of the dismissal of the Whigs, which it 
Queen Ade- was asscrtcd Brousham had furnished, concludins: with the 

laide . 

words " The Queen has done it all." 

The charge against him of thus calumniating Queen 
Adelaide was frequently repeated both in the Press and in 
the House of Commons, and I believe it never received anv 
contradiction. If he was the author of the article, he must 
have rashly proceeded on the supposed probability of the 
fact that the King on this occasion was acting under his 
wife's advice. She certainlv was stroniilv Conservative and 
anti-Whiggish ; but it was afterwards shown beyond all doubt 
that she was not in the remotest degree privy to this trans- 
action till the day after Lord Melbourne's dismissal. Indeed 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 459 

any sane person would liave dissuaded a step wliicli must CHAP, 
necessarily lead to disappointment and mortification, as, not- ' 



\\ithstanding the removal of Lord Althorp from the House a.d. is34^. 
of Commons by his father's death, the reform mania had by 
no means as yet sufficiently subsided to tolerate the existence 
of a Conservative Government. It is even said that the 
Duke of Wellington, when sent for, refused to take office till 
the King showed him the manner in which the Queen had 
been insulted in the 'Times,' when he admitted that what 
had been done was irrevocable, and sent off for Sir Robert 
Peel, who was then in Italy. 

I believe that the Kino-'s act in dismissino^- his Ministers 
was prompted by his general notion of the prostrate state of 
the Whig party, without any particular reference to the mis- 
conduct of the Lord Chancellor ; but it suited the views of 
those who had a personal spite against this erratic functionary 
to lay the event entirely to him : — 

"There could not, indeed," said the 'Times,' "be a more 1 7th Nov. 
revolting spectacle than for the highest law officer of the empire 
to be travelling about like a quack doctor through the provinces, 
puffing himself and his little nostrums, and committing and 
degrading the Government of which he had the honour to be a 
member. His Majesty could not but be indignant at such con- 
duct. And it is a fact, notwithstanding all the fulsome adulation 
heaped on his ' gracious master ' at Inverness, Aberdeen, Edin- 
burgh, and elsewhere, that the peripatetic keeper of the King's 
conscience has not once been admitted since his return from his 
travels to the honour of an interview with royalty, either at 
Windsor or Brighton." 

Again : — 

" It is in general admitted that the downfall of the Government 
is referable in a great measure to the unbecoming conduct of 
Lord Brougham as Chancellor." * 

The Chancellor, in his parting address to the bar, rather 
indicated by his manner that he thought he was taking a 
short leave of them, and tliat he should shortly be bade 
again to perfect the juridical system which he had established. 

* 'Times,' 10th November. 



460 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CBLAP. What he chiefly rejoiced in was the appointment of " that 
' consummate Judge," the Master of the Eolls (Pepys), the 



A.U. 1834. merit of which he justly took entirely to himself, although 

the patronage is supposed to be exclusively in the Prime 

Minister, and he congratulated future Chancellors in being 

able implicitly to rely on such an able assistant. He evidently 

considered this appointment his master-stroke of policy as 

securing his return to his office on the restoration of his 

pai'ty. 

Brougham's Whatever may have brought about the change of Grovern- 

returnL^ mcut, Brougham, after the crisis occurred, certainly mis- 

the Great couducted himsclf, in two matters arising out of it, in a 

King. manner deserving severe reprehension. He had been allowed 

to retain the Great Seal some time after his colleagues had 

been deprived of the insignia of their offices that he might 

deliver judgment in cases argued before him, and, according 

to established etiquette and propriety, he ought to have 

delivered it back into the King's own hands ; but, having 

heard that the King talked of him very resentfully, and had 

even pettishly declared that " he never wished to see his ugly 

face again," he sent the davis regni to the King in a bag, 

as a fishmonger might have sent a salmon for the King's 

dinner.* 

His offer to But his Solicitation of the office of Chief Baron of the 

cliie?Baron Exchequer called forth graver censure. Lyndhurst being again 

of the Ex- Chancellor, this office was vacated by him, and was destined for 

checi uer. 

Sir James Scarlett, who had been harshly used by the Whigs, 
and was now a warm adherent of the Conservative party. 
Brougham, not ignorant of this fact, wrote a letter to Lynd- 
hurst, which was shown to me within a few minutes after it 
was received, offering to accept the office of Chief Baron, 
without any salary beyond his pension as ex-Chancellor — 
pointing out the saving to the public which would arise from 
this arrangement — and undertaking that, if appointed, he 
would do all the equity business himself, so that no Yice- 
Chancellors, or Vice-Cliancellor, would be required. He 
probably supposed that the arrangement would not be un- 

* On the 21st November, 1834, exactly four years all but one day from the 
time he had received it. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 461 

acceptable to Lyndhurst, as it might lead to an under- CHAP. 

standing that the two rival legal chiefs should exchange the 

offices of Chancellor and Chief Baron during their lives as a.d. 183-i. 
their parties were respectively in office or in opposition. But 
Lyndhurst laughed at the proposal as absurd, and returned 
for answer that no decision could be pronounced upon it till 
Sir Eobert Peel should return back from Italy. Upon this 
proceeding being made known there was a burst of public 
disapprobation. " We can now understand," it was said, 
" what he meant when he described barristers as gentlemen 
who jply in Westminster Hall." " The offer to do the work 
cheap is spitefully to prevent Sir James Scarlett from having 
the office which is his- due." 

So pelted was he by the pitiless storm, that, to avoid it, he 
ran off to France and wrote the following letter of revocation 
to Lord Lyndhurst : — 

Paris, Saturday, Nov. 29. 

"My Lord, — I had the honour of receiving your Lordship's 
letter, announcing the stale in which the Government at present 
is, and that nothing of any kind can be settled either as to mea- 
sures or anything else until the arrival of Sir liobert Peel. 

" Although I felt extremely anxious to accomplish the two 
objects of saving a large sum of money and of completing the 
reform of the Court of Chancery, by abolishing the office of Vice- 
Chancellor (a subject on which I transmitted a full memorial to 
your Lordship from Dover, and on which I had sent a memorial 
before I left the G-reat Seal), yet some communications which I 
have since received from persons in whose judgment I entirely 
confide, give me room to think that my accepting a judicial situ- 
ation, though without any emolument, might appear to others to 
interfere with my parliamentary duties ; T therefore feel myself 
under the necessity of desiring that the tender of gratuitous 
service formerly made should be considered as withdrawn. 

" My own clear and nnhesitating opinion is, that, following the 
example of Ijord Loughborough and others, I could attend as 
much to parliamentary duties when on the Bench as when in a 
private station. But in these times, I have no right to take any 
step which has any iendency to discourage the efforts of those 
whose principles arc my own, and whoso confidence I am proud 
to enjoy. 

" I have the honour, &c." 



462 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP. Many people supposed that Brougham was now extin- 
' guished. He had violated the rules of professional etiquette 
A.u. 1834. on a point of vital importance to the due administration of 
justice ; he had tried to undermine a private friend ; and 
(what might have been expected to be more fatal still) he 
had caused himself again to be compared to the "bottle 
conjurer," by promising to perform a feat which was physi- 
cally impossible. But such is the elasticity of his powers, 
so inexhaustible are his resources, such sway does he possess 
by being both fascinating and formidable, so many more 
lives has his reputation than any of the feline race, that he 
speedily made the world overlook all his recent vagaries ; and 
although he has never since enjoyed the confidence of any 
party or of any individual, he has been well received in private 
society, and has continued to play a very distinguished ■ part 
in public life. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 463 



CHAPTEK YI. 



"THE HUNDEED DATS " TO THE FINAL RESIGNATION 
OF LORD MELBOURNE. 

1834—1841. 

Peel, being now Prime Minister, published a very skilful CHAP, 
manifesto, acquiescing in the Reform Bill, and promising ' 

liberal policy in all departments of the State.* ^d, 1834, 

If, without dissolving Parliament, he had brought forward 
his measures, keeping an appeal to the country as a resource 
in case of factious opposition to them, he would have copied 
Pitt's policy in 1784, and, like Pitt, he might have ruled for 
twenty years. But by immediate dissolution he recklessly 
threw away the trump card by which the game might perhaps 
have been won. 

In spite of all the blundering and bad luck of the Whig 
leaders, there was no sufficient reaction to give stability to 
those Avho, within two years, had strenuously opposed the 
almost universal national imj^ulse in favour of Parliamentary 
Reform. The elections were unfavourable to the Conservatives, 
a,ud the rejection of the Ministerial nominee for the office of 
Speaker proved that in the House of Commons there was a 
decided majority against the Government. 

Brougham was boyishly exhilarated by this occurrence, and <^» a disso- 
expected to have the Great Seal again in his custody before Parliament 
a month was over. As yet he acted in concert witli Mel- 



a majority 
returned 



iltat 



exiiliatioii. 



bourne and the rest of his late colleagues, and he assisted in for the 

wi ' < ■ A 

preparing an amendment to the address to be moved in both Biomrham's 
Houses " lamenting tliat tlie progress of .salutary relbrms had 
been interrupted and endangered by the dissolution of a 
Parliament earnestly intent upon the vigorous prosecution 

* His address to the electors of Tamworth. 



464 



REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1835. 

24th Feb. 

His speech 
against the 
new Go- 
vernment. 



of measures to which the wishes of the people were most 
anxiously and justly directed." 

The amendment being moved by Melbourne and opposed 
by the Duke of Wellington, Brougham instantly started up 
to support it, and delivered an elaborate speech of three hours, 
which he immediately published as a pamphlet, and he has 
included it among his Select Orations. But I must confess 
it is only as biographer that I have been enabled to read it 
through. The whole drift of it may be learned from a few 
of the opening sentences : — 

" I have risen, my Lords, thus immediately after the noble 
Duke, because I thought that he manifestly misunderstood the 
sound constitutional proposition of my noble fiiend (Lord Mel- 
bourne), and the consequences that flow from it — namely, that 
for the dismissal of the late Government, the noble Duke, by 
accepting office on our dismissal, incurred the whole responsi- 
bility. This proposition the noble Duke thought that he met, 
relieving himself from its consequences by solemnly protesting — 
and I for one, my Lords, readily and perfectly believe in the 
sincerity of that protest — that he knew nothing previously of the 
circumstances of the dismissal ; that he never had been consulted 
about the matter ; that he was entirely ignorant of the intentions 
and motions of the Court with regard to it ; and that he had no com- 
munication with any such quarter for above two months before the 
change took place. But he entirely misunderstood the doctrine of 
constitutional law on which my noble friend founded his argument 
that the noble Duke was responsible for the dismissal of the late 
Government. My noble friend never asserted that the noble 
Duke was de facto the adviser of that dismissal. Xo such thing. 
I repeat that the noble Duke is responsible in point of fact, as 
well as in point of law. Without the noble Duke's assistance, 
the act of dismissing the late Government could not have been 
accomplished. If indeed, instead of being dismissed, the mem- 
bers of the late Administration had resigned, or if asked to return 
they had declared that they would not come back to their places, 
that would have been another matter. But if, instead of resign- 
ing they were dismissed against their will, and were not asked to 
resume office, then those who took office after them became acces- 
sories after the fact to the dismissal — na}^ before the fact, and 
actual accomplices in the fact itself; for, without their acquies- 
cence, that act of dismissal could not have been perfected." 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 465 

The same facts and reasonings are repeated with little CHAP, 
variety of expression or illustration, and the tedium is only ' 

relieved by a personal attack upon Lyndhurst, with whom a.d. 1835. 
he was then at bitter enmity, and whom he accused of 
having consciously pursued an improper course in Parlia- 
ment, for the purpose of retaining possession of office.* 

Lord Lyndhurst said in answer — 

" I deny peremptorily the statement of the noble and learned 
Lord. I say, if I may make use of the expression, lie has uttered 
an untruth in so expressing himself. What right has the noble 
and learned Lord in his fluent, and I may say flippant manner, to 
attack me as he has dared to do? The view given by the noble 
and learned Lord of \^•hat was said by the noble Duke, was a mis- 
representation b}^ the noble and learned Lord. His quickness and 
his sagacity must have caused him to understand the noble Duke ; 
and I can ascribe what he stated only to an intention to pervert 
the meaning of the noble Duke." 

Lord BrougJiam. — "I will just use the same language to the 
noble aud learned Lord that he uses to me, if he chooses to make 
this an arena of indecency." j" 

With this " tu-quoque," and no explanation even that the 
word " untruth " was not meant to be used in an unparlia- 
mentary sense, it might have been expected that the two noble 
and learned vituperators would have met next morning with 
their seconds in Hyde Park ; but no such encounter, as far as 
was publicly known, took place, and in little more than a 
twelvemonth, both of them strangely finding themselves 
opposed ^^ith equal eagerness to a Whig government, they 
swore an eternal friendship, which has remained inviolate to 
the present hour. 

Although the amendment was carried by a considerable 
majority in the Commons, so weak were the Whigs in the 
Upper House that they did not venture to divide upon it — 
or indeed upon any other question during the existence of 
the present Government. Put while the real work of over- 
turning it was going on in the Commons, where Sir Robert 
Peel with a minority was making a gallant stand, Prougham 

♦ Lord brougham's SpccclicM, vol. iv. p. 07. f 25 Ilaiisurd, 127. 

VOL. VIIL 2 H 



466 EEIQN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, in the Lords very zealously kept up a constant irregular fire 
' of petitions, questions, and motions for papers, by which the 



A.D. 1835. ministerialists were considerably galled ; and, foreseeing that 
7th April, a decisive victory was at hand, he made no doubt of having 
his appropriate share of the spoil. At last came the fatal 
division on Lord John Eussell's motion respecting the Irish 
Church, when Peel surrendered and his ministry was dis- 
solved. 

Brougham considered the Great Seal to be again his own 
property, and was turning in his mind on what day the 
transfer would take place, and whether he should make any 
special address to the bar on resuming his seat in the Court 
of Chancery. 
Lord Mel- Lord Melbourne was " sent for," and the King, as a matter 
bourne re- q£ necessity. Conferred upon him unlimited power to arrange 
What was a uew administration. But Lord Melbourne had resolved in 
with ^^^ liis own mind that Brougham never should be Chancellor 
Brougham? again, and that he himself never would sit in the same 
Cabinet with one so erratic, so troublesome, and so little 
trustworthy. No man ever was placed in a more embar- 
rassing position than Lord Melbourne at this juncture. 
Brougham had a sort of vested right in the office on the 
restoration of his party to power. He had rendered brilliant 
service to that party, and to him the jDresent ostensible head 
of it was mainly indebted for the function he was now per- 
forming of naming his colleagues. If a support with due 
regard to subordination could not be confidently reckoned 
upon from the late Whig Chancellor, the most fearful appre- 
hensions were to be entertained from his hostility ; for in the 
history of party men in England, an opposition assailant so 
active, so enterprising, so energetic, so adventurous, so per- 
severing, so unscrupulous, was not recorded. But said 
Melbourne, " Although he will be dangerous as an enemy, he 
w^ould be certain destruction as a friend. We may have 
small chance of going on without him, but to go on with him 
is impossible." What was felt and expressed on the occasion 
I well knew, for when I was told of the difficulty about 
Brougham, I put in my own claim. I then strongly advo- 
cated Brougham, as 1 was not yet aware of the full amount 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 467 

of his waywardness when he before held the Great Seal. Next CHAP, 
to him, I urged that from my position and my services the ' 



public would expect that I should be preferred. Melbourne a.d. 1835. 

observed to me : — " With Brougham I cannot act, and I will 

not again make the attempt. We are sensible of your 

services, and have perfect reliance on your steadiness and 

your discretion, but there are circumstances which will render 

it impossible for us to give you the G-reat Seal at present, and 

we must think of some other arrangement." 

He gave me no further explanation then, but in a little 
time I knew all. Brougham being absolutely and defini- 
tively excluded, the grand object was to give him as little 
offence as possible and as long as possible to ward off 
his active hostility. To have made me Chancellor would 
have instantly thrown him into a paroxysm of fury. On 
the contrary, they resolved to keep the office vacant for an 
indefinite time, and diplomatically to hold out to him the 
hope of still filling it. They told him that from his proceed- Brougham 
ings in Scotland during the last autumn having been mis- J^e^Qr^^'^ 
represented to the King, his Majesty had contracted a strong. Seal put 
although groundless, prejudice against him, which would mis^sion!" 
gradually wear away— that according to a French phrase 
*' si vous avez un Koi, il faut un peu le menager " — you must 
not fly in his face ; if you insult him the people may take 
part with him against you ; therefore to give a little time 
for things to run smooth, the Great Seal would be put in 
commission. When I was told of this, and that the Com- 
missioners were to be Shad well the Yice-Chancellor, Pepys 
the Master of the Kolls, and Bosanquet a Common Law Judge, 
all of them having more business in their own courts than 
they could dispose of, I earnestly and honestly remonstrated, 
foreseeing that the plan could not possibly work well, and 
that the interests of justice would be sacrificed by it to party 
expedience. But Brougham was duped, and acquiesced — 
nay more, undertook as " an independent peer " to patronise 
the new Government. Till the affair had been finally settled 
he was rather sulky, and (as he had done in the House of 
Commons on the formation of Lord Grey's Government, in 
November, 1830), he insisted on bringing forward on a day sth April. 

2 u 2 



468 



EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



Brougham 
Lord Pro- 
tector. 



CHAP, lie had named a motion on Education, of which he had 

' given notice, saying, " it was of no consequence to him who 

A.D. 1835. was in or out of office." * But on the day when Melbourne 

18th April, announced himself minister and delivered an inauguration 

address, Brougham zealously took him under his protection. 

Without any written convention or express bargain, an 
understanding had been entered into which was long acted 
upon, that O'Connell with his party should support the new 
Liberal Government, Eoman Catholics in Ireland having 
their fair share of government appointments. There was no 
real harm in this arrangement, supposing that no objectionable 
measures were proposed, and no appointments of unfit men 
were made under it — as in the result really was the case. 
But there was much clamour about the alleged " Compact," t 
and it was made use of successfully as a weapon by the flying 
Tories. On this occasion, when Melbourne had finished. Lord 
Alvanley, a Tory peer — after reading a letter lately written 
by O'Connell in which he declared that he was determined 
to bring about a repeal of the Union — desired to know, 

*' ' Whether the new Prime Minister agreed with these senti- 
ments, and whether he was to have Mr. O'Connell's support, and 
on what terms ? ' 

" Lord Brougham rose to order and entreated his noble friend 
to allow Mm to say a word before he gave any answer to the 
question put by the noble Lord opposite. (Loud cries of order.) 

Lord Alvanley. — " I did not address the question to the noble 
and learned Lord." 

Lord Brougham. — " No ; and it is precisely for that very reason 
that I rise to answer it." (Cry of order, and that Lord Melbourne 
should answer.) 

Lord Melbourne. — "I am asked how far I coincide in the 
opinions of Mr. O'Connell about the Union with Ireland? I 
answer, not at all. I am asked whether I am to have the aid 
of Mr. O'Connell? I answer, I cannot tell. And, lastly, on 
what terms ? I answer, I have made no tenns with him whatever." 

This officious interference created a good deal of ridicule — 
and it was said that Brougham having lost his former oflice 

* 27 Hansard, 974. 

t It was sometimes called the Lichfield House Treaty, because a meeting 
attended jointly by Whigs and O'Connellitcs was held about this time at the 
house of the Earl of Lichfield, in St, James's Square. 



LIFE OF LOED BKOUGHAM. 469 

of Lord Chancellor now aspired to the higher office of Lord CHAP. 
Protector. Melbourne, who when roused could display con- ' 



siderable spirit and resolution, disdained such humiliating a.d. 1835. 
jprotection ; and by his impatient repudiation of it exjoressed 
the sentiment of Home's hero, — 

" The blood of Douglas can protect itself." 

Brougham was afterwards a little less presumptuous, but he Lyndhuist's 
continued to vote with ministers, and to do whatever he pofit^on^^" 
thought would be agreeable to them, in spite of the efforts of 
Lyndhurst to persuade him that he was duped by his old 
colleagues. His confidence in his speedy restoration con- 
tinued, and he was the faithful slave of the ministers till the 
very end of the session. They stood much in need of his aid, 
for in the House of Lords they had to encounter the most 
factious and unprincipled opposition I have ever kno\\'n. 
Peel in the House of Commons was very moderate and fair 
in not obstructing the measures of Government, except on 
just or plausible grounds ; but Lyndhurst, who was supreme 
in the House of Lords, at the head of a large section of 
peers who implicitly obeyed him, laid down a rule that 
no Government Bill should pass which could be rejected 
without strong popular odium, being actuated by the pre- 
meditated pui-pose of afterwards taunting the Government 
with having accomplished nothing, and of triumphantly quoting 
the maxim of King William III., that " of all Governments 
that is the worst which has not the power to carry its own 
measures." Various salutary bills which passed the Commons 
with little objection he threw out on the second reading in 
the Lords, if they had not attracted much popular notice, 
and their rejection was not likely to give the Whigs a useful 
grievance. 

Thus he could not treat the Bill for the Reform of Municipal 
Corporations — the great boast of this Session. Posterity will 
luirdly believe the corruption and mischievous absurdities 
which distinguished the infinitely varied constitutions of the 
towns in England down to the year of grace 1835, all pro- 
fessing to have one object in view — the good government of 
the locality. A bill to give them an uniform constitution, 



470 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

^^^' based on representation and self government, had been 

. framed after a laborious investigation, by intelligent commis- 

A.D. 1835. sioners, into the abuses of the existing system. The principle 
of this bill Peel warmly applauded, and after some amend- 
ments to its details it had passed the Commons with his 
approbation. Lyndhurst, although he vowed its destruction, 
could not venture to execute his purpose sooner than in the 
Committee, but there he meant that it should be strangled. 
Had it not been for Brougham's strenuous and unwearied 
exertions, it could not have escaped. A motion was carried 
to hear witnesses and counsel against it at the bar. One 
counsel (Sir Charles Wetherell) in opening his objections to 
it occupied twelve hours and a half, and there was a list of 
town clerks and other witnesses whose examination against it 
would have lasted several months. Had the two rival Law 
Lords coalesced at this time> they must have succeeded, for 
there was no Law Lord to oppose them; but Brougham 
remained true, and, proclaiming that the bill was exclusively 
his, as he had been Chancellor when the Commission of 
Inquiry passed the Great Seal, he defended it with gallantry, 
perseverance, and success. It underwent several important 
mutilations under the name of Amendments in the Com- 
mittee. These, however, although introduced by his own 
Chancellor, when sent back to the Commons, Peel would not 
agree to, and, after this almost unanimous dissent of the 
Commons, Lyndhurst did not venture to insist upon them. 
So the bill passed nearly in its integrity, and has been found 
to work most admirably for the public good. 
Brougham's Bcsidcs rendering effectual service in rescuing the Muni- 
iTus'ia- cipal Keform Bill from the fate to which Lyndhurst had 
bonis in destined it. Brougham wasted during this session an infinity 
of parliamentary labour upon an almost infinite variety of 
other subjects without any useful result. I thank heaven 
that I was not then a member of the House of Peers, and I 
do not speak from the testimony of my senses ; but, judging 
from Hansard, the expectant Chancellor must have been 
"upon the floor" several hours every evening the House 
met, and he must have spoken as much as would be enough 
for any other public orator diuiug a long Kfe. He was 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 471 

constantly introducing bills for important national objects, ^^4"^' 
such as " General Education," " the Management of Chari- ' 

ties," and the "Prevention of Bribery," or moving resolu- a.d. 1835. 
tions for the suppression of slavery, for the better adminis- 
tration of the Poor Laws, or for lessening the imposts on 
knowledge ; or opposing or defending every other bill which 
was passing through the House, or presenting petitions 
himself, or commenting upon petitions presented by other 
peers. As I might well be suspected of exaggeration, I refer 
to the "record," and it will be found that of his speeches 
dehvered in the session of 1835, Hansard immortalises no 
fewer than two hundred and twenty-one. Many others 
must have perished for want of the vates sacer, for his habit 
was to make a long speech on giving a notice of motion, 
another in postponing it (which might happen several times), 
and another in withdrawing it. Then he would often make 
a speech in putting a question without having given any 
notice whatever. These interludes the fatigued reporters 
often listened to without taking a note. Hansard's Alpha- 
betical Index to subjects of debate on ^^'hich he made 
reported speeches in the session of 1835, I beg leave to copy 
for my own justification, the amusement of my reader, and 
the wonder of future ages : — 

" Brougham, Lord. — Address to the King. Administration of 
Justice in Ireland. Admission of Ladies. Agricultural Distress. 
Breach of Naval Discipline. Bribery at Elections. Borough Re- 
form in Scotland. Business, delay of. Canada Central Criminal 
Court. Charities. Church of Ireland. Church of England. Church 
of Scotland. Church Property. Church-rates. Commissioners of 
Law Inquiry. Commissioners of Public Instruction. Committees 
of Privilege. Constabulary of Ireland. Corporation Commission. 
Corporation Eeform. Corn Laws. Counsel for Prisoners. Dis- 
senters' Marriages. Dissolution of the Ministry. Dublin Police. 
Duty on Paper. Ecclesiastical Courts. Education. Entails in 
Scotland. Houses of Parliament, new. Imprisonment for Debt. 
Indemnity to Witnesses. Islington Market. London University. 
Mairiagc Law. Music and Dancing. Newspaper Stamps. Oaths 
Abolition Bill. Patents. Poor Law, the new. Post Office. 
Prison Discipline. I'rocessions in Ireland. Russia and Austria. 
Sheriffs' Accounts. Slavery. Spain. Stoke Pogis. Taxes ou 



472 



EETGN OF WILLIAM IV. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1835. 



His com- 
plaints of 
abuse in the 
Press. 



And in the 
House of 
Commons. 



Knowledge. Tithes, recovery of. Tithes of Turnips Exemption 
Bill. University Oaths. Western, Great, Railway. Wills, 
execution of. Writ of Certiorari, abolition of." * 

He thus appears to have been ready to speak and to have 
spoken de omni scihili et quolihet ente ; and, considering the 
length of his parliamentary career, he must, during his life, 
have emitted a much greater number of words in public than 
any man that ever appeared in this world — at least since 
Noah's flood. 

His popularity, notwithstanding all these efforts, seems 
now to have been rapidly declining, for he complains of 
being abused in all the newspapers — particularly in the 
Government newspapers, — 

" newspapers," growled he— "I will not say having the patronage 
of the Government, nor will I say under the protection of the 
Government; certainly not the protection and patronage of my 
noble friend (Lord Melbourne) — but newspapers which have 
taken my noble friend under their protection. I do not think, 
if I were allowed to give an opinion on the subject, that the 
attacks are very judicious, — made on one like myself, unconnected 
with the Government, never saying one word against the Govern- 
ment — and I am happy to say that I have not had occasion to do 
so — but uniformly defending and supporting it. I am sure the 
attacks do not proceed from my noble friend ; he can have no 
hand in them ; he is a man of sense ; his underlings are those 
who assail me. One man is disappointed by not getting any- 
thing while I was in oflSce. Another is vexed for some similar 
reason. It is the underlings who do all this, instigated by the 
sort of motive I have described." | 

He likewise complained of attacks made upon him in the 
House of Commons : — 

" It is said there that I enjoy a pension of 15,000Z. a year. I 
wish I did; but it is only one-third of that amount. Then 
I am charged with enjoying this pension merely for having 
drawn a large salary as Chancellor during the term of four years. 
I should have been entitled to that pension if I had been 
Chancellor only five minutes. I am taunted with having given 
up nothing for it. I gave up for it a larger, a much larger 
income. If those excellent persons would send up a bill 



iiO Hansard, Index B. 



t 29 Hansard, 1234. 



LIFE OF LOPJD BEOUGHAM. 473 

enabling me to have again what I have given up, my practice CHAP. 
at the bar — I mean not offensively to your Lordships, whose good 



will and favour I am always anxious to conciliate, however un- , ^ ..qo- 

** ^ A.T>, iOOO. 

fortunate I may have been in the attempt — I shall zealously 
support the bill, and further its progress through this House. * 
These persons— these very persons who, when I made an offer 
to save the pension — these very persons were those who, by the 
clamour they raised, drove me, against my better judgment, 
to retract the offer I had made. I said at the time ' Now mark 
what will follow ; these very persons who raise this clamour will 
be the first to complain of me for having a pension. ' " f 

On the prorogation of Parliament ex-Chancellor Brougham loth Sept. 
retired to his seat in Westmorland, neither satiated nor 
fatigued by all the speaking he had indulged in during the 
session. Flattered with the notion which he entertained and 
pretty freely expressed, that he had saved the Government, 
and that it could not exist without his aid, he was not much 
dissatisfied with his position, and he was exuberantly gay. 
Without any promise from Melbom-ne, or any farther personal His confi- 
explanation with him since the Government was first formed, tation^o^r' 
he counted with confidence on a speedy restoration to. his ^^'"^ ^^■ 
former office, and he anticipated that, being again in the office. 
Cabinet, he must of necessity be the actual Prime Minister. 
This change seemed to him to be natural and certain, being 
(as he conceived) for the advantage of those who could easily 
bring it about. He imagined it clear to all mankind that as 
the Government could not stand without him, much less 
against him, and as he could not be expected (indeed it 
would not be constitutional) that he should continue to direct 
the measures of the Crown without being in office, he would 
soon be recalled from his rustic retirement among the tombs 
of the De Burghams to re-occupy the " marble chair," and 

* During the fervor of the Reform Bill, I belonged to a club of Scotch 
members called the " Sheep's Head Club." Brougham and IMelbourne dined 
with us one day. The chairman gave the health of the Chancellor with 
a eulogistic speech. But he, having well drunk, talked with the utmost 
contempt of the bauble he had the misfortune to possess called the Great Seal, 
and expressed an eager wish to throw his patent of Peerage into the fire, that 
he might return U) the House of Commons. But after all, I doubt his sincerity, 
particularly as I have heard him say that he has made better speeches in the 
House of Lords than he ever did in the House of Commons. 

t 28 Hansard, 710. 



474 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, to form a plan for the next parliamentary campaign at 
' Westminster. The King's prejudices might still subsist, as 
A.D. 1835. he was of a race obstinate in their personal dislikes; but 
George II. had at last taken Pitt the elder into favour, and 
George III. had been obliged to accept as his minister 
Charles James Fox, whom he actually abhorred and had 
denounced as a traitor. Nothing seemed so simple and easy 
as the desired and expected arrangement ; the King had only 
to hold a council, and, receiving the Great Seal from the 
Commissioners, to deliver it to Lord Brougham with the title 
of Lord Chancellor, and then the Government would be 
complete, no one would be aggrieved, and no expectation, 
reasonable or unreasonable, would be disappointed. 

But the Long Vacation passed away without any indication 
of change, and when the first day of Michaelmas Term 
arrived the three Lords' Commissioners resumed their sittings 
in the Court of Chancery. Truth to tell Melbourne was so 
much pleased with the manner in which he had "tided 
over" the last session that he had resolved to start on 
another voyage without altering in any respect the manning 
or the trim of the vessel of the State. 

Meanwhile a storm was rising for which he was not at all 
prepared. "When reminded that what had been foretold 
abo-ut the Great Seal being in commission had come true, 
that there were serious discontents in Westminster Hall, and 
that the arrears in the Court of Chancery were rapidly 
accumulating to the enormous grievance of the suitors, he 
exclaimed, with his usual affectation of reckless insouciance^ 
" the groans of the suitors do not disturb my rest." 

But while he thought he should enjoy entire tranquillity 
for a long while to come his repose was most cruelly dis- 
turbed by a pamphlet of Sir Edward Sugden — then ex- 
Chancellor of Ireland, (now Baron St. Leonard's) — entitled 
' What has become of the Great Seal ? ' in which he depicted 
in glowing colours the sad state of affairs in the Court of 
Chancery, and complained that the administration of justice 
was sacrificed to Whig expediency. The sound of this explo- 
sion was reverberated far and near. All the newspapers — 
both Whig and Tory, both London and provincial — in the 



LIFE OF LOKD BEOUGHAM. 475 

want of foreign news or of domestic topics more stirring, took ^^^• 
up the delays and arrears arising out of the Commission, and ' 

either in the tone of threat or of recommendation pressed a.d. 1835. 
that it should be put an end to. The fact was that the 
Commissioners in their own several Courts had more causes 
than they could possibly determine, so that when the Chan- 
cellor's work was likewise thrown upon their hands all was 
confusion. Again they acted most unsatisfactorily as a court 
of appeal, for the Master of the KoUs and the Yice-Chancellor 
sat to revise the decrees of each other, and it was observed 
that when the decree of one was reversed the balance of 
credit was preserved by the reversal of the next decree of the 
other appealed against. The judicial business of the House 
of Lords also, for want of a Chancellor during the last session, 
had been disposed of in a very unsatisfactory manner, Lynd- 
hurst and Brougham presiding by turns, and the spite between 
them still being so bitter as visibly to disturb their equanimity. 

A meeting of the Cabinet was called to consider what Resolution 
was to be done under these circumstances, and I afterwards ^et to 
had a minute and accurate account of the proceedings which abandon 

^ ^ Brougham, 

took place. to make 

After much deliberation as to whether they would again Q^^nceiior 
admit Brougham, or what better course they could pursue, and Bicker- 
they came to the very hasty, rash, and foolish resolution terofthe 
that the Commission should be put an end to ; that Brougham 
should be abandoned; that Pepys, the Solicitor General, 
should be Chancellor ; and that Bickersteth, who had never 
been in office nor in Parliament, should be Master of the 
EoUs, with a peerage. The foundation of the whole scheme 
was the supposed power of Bickersteth to quell Brougham, 
and this they believed on the authority of Sir John Cam 
Hobhouse, who assured them that on one occasion when 
Brougham was Chancellor, Bickersteth was arguing a case in 
the Privy Council about a charter to the University of 
London, and Brougham, being at first inclined to be imper- 
tinent, was completely put down by him, and had not another 
word to say for himself during the rest of the day. This 
anecdote made a deep impression on all present, and the 
hope of finding in Bickersteth an overmatch for Brougham, 



Rolls. 



his old col 
leases. 



476 REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP, raised an irresistible desire to have the benefit of his cham- 

' pionship. 
A.D. 1835. No means were used to break or to soften the intelligence 
to Brougham. He first learned from the public newspapers 
that Sir Charles Pepys was Chancellor under the title of Lord 
Cottenham. 
Opinion In my opinion, Brougham was atrociously ill-used on this 

Bimi ham occasion. Considering his distinguished reputation, consider- 
was ill-used ino: what he had done for the Liberal cause, considerino^ his 
bourne "and relations with the Melbourne Government, I incline to think 
that at every risk they ought to have taken him back into 
the Cabinet, however difficult it might have been to make 
conditions or stipulations with him as to his future conduct 
and demeanour. But sure I am that in the manner in which 
they finally threw him off they showed disingenuousness, 
cowardice, and ingratitude. I have myself heard him say, 
with tears in his eyes: — "If Melbourne had treated me 
openly and kindly, he might have done what he liked with 
the Gi-reat Seal, and we might have ever remained friends. 
The pretence about the Bang's dislike I found to be utterly 
false. William may have been angry at the moment, and 
perhaps justly, for things I had said and done ; but in April, 
1835, when he was obliged to dismiss his Tory ministers, he 
did not care a button what individuals succeeded ; and I was 
not a bit more disaore cable to him than Melbourne himself." 
I place no faith in a story circulated that a further attempt 
was made to mystify him by a communication that a bill was 
to be brought in to divide the functions of Lord Chancellor, 
and that he was to have the political half. It was part of the 
plan now adopted to bring in such a bill, but this half had 
been promised solemnly to me, and Brougham, even if he 
had believed such an offer to be sincere, would have con- 
temned it.* 

I have never learned on any authority the particulars of 
what Brougham said or did when he first heard that he had 

* It would appear that in the beginning ^f January, 1836, there was a 
correspondence between Brougham end Melbourne about bringing in a bill 
for abolishing inii)risonment for debt, but without any allusion to the Great 
Seal.— 39 Hansard, 180. / 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 477 

been betrayed, and tbat lie was now an outcast, but there ^^^^^• 
seems no reason to doubt tlie statement tbat not only his , 



Brougham 

of the ill- 



bodily health but his mind was very seriously affected. Parlia- a.d. 1836. 
ment met on the 14th of February, but he did not appear. 
It was given out that he would come at Easter. Easter 
arrived but no Lord Brougham, and when the prorogation 20thAug. 
took place, after a Session considerably shortened by his 
absence, he was still at Brougham Hall. A debate in the 
House of Lords during this quiet and dull period was likened 
to " the play of ' Hamlet,' the, part of Hamlet omitted on 
account of the indisposition of the first tragedian of the 
company." 

Kumours were spread abroad that, like Lord Bacon, when Effect 
disappointed by not being made Solicitor General when he 
had a right to expect the appointment, he had resolved for usage he 
ever to renounce public life and to devote himself to phi- 
losophy; but I believe that his secession is to be ascribed 
only to his utter incapacity for public business. There can 
be no doubt that he felt resentment and vowed revenge for 
the usage he had experienced. He unjustly blamed Pepys. 
Pepys no doubt owed his advancement to be Master of the 
Kolls entirely to him. Pepy% however had not supplanted 
him by any intrigue, and, on the contrary, had been entirely 
passive in the movement which shoved him on the woolsack. 
He was selected only to make way for Bickersteth, on whom 
all the hopes of the party rested. This notion that Bickersteth 
was to be pitted against Brougham, when at last it reached 
his ears, exasperated him still more, for he knew that 
Bickersteth had declined the offer of a seat in the House 
of Commons from the dread of mixing in debate, and he 
longed at once to enter the lists with him that he might 
annihilate him. Though generally plunged in deep melan- 
choly, the recluse at times fired up, and said " he would be off 
for London," but his medical attendants would by no means 
permit him to leave Brougham Hall till his spirits should be 
more equal. 

If he was able to read the newspapers he must have been Bick-erstotii 
gratified and even amused by finding that Bickorstetli (Lord ^ i^'^^^^'^- 
Langdale) had from the beginning proved an utter failure. 



478 EEIGN OF WILLIAM IV. 

CHAP. Without any opponent the Ministerial champion had actually 
' broken down. Intending to support the Government Bill 



A.D. 1836. for bisecting the Great Seal, he made a speech which damaged 
it exceedingly, and all hope was gone of his ever looking an 
opponent in the face. 

Although Brougham might excusably have enjoyed the 
humiliation of those by whom he had been injured, and 
might have been permitted to assist in making manifest their 
discomfiture, yet if he was capable of reasoning soundly and 
feeling magnanimously, he must have been glad of an excuse 
for now avoiding the arena of his former glory. Lyndhurst, 
whom he must have joined if he was to gratify his vengeance, 
was acting upon the " obstructive system " in a manner still 
more outrageous than during the last Session when Brougham 
had so manfully and so successfully checked him. Lynd- 
hurst's destruction of Ministerial Bills which came up from 
the Commons can be compared to nothing but the Massacre 
of the Innocents. Brougham, with all his desire to see 
Melbourne punished, and the heads of his chosen champions, 
Cottenham and Langdale, knocked together, could hardly 
have wished to be present at the o]oen conference between the 
committees of the two Houses, ^hen, at Lyndhurst's mandate, 
the Lords insisted on striking out all the useful clauses in 
a Bill for Amending Municipal Corporations, although Peel 
had supported them, and they were urgently required for the 
public good. Yet this was the great struggle of the Session. 
The aggravation of Brougham's ill-usage from his own party 
was that they knew he had no honourable means of being 
revenged upon them. 

Brougham's The first good ucws I heard of Brougham in his seclusion 

recovery. ^^^^ £j,^^ ^^^ commou fi'ieud Baron Parke, who had gone the 
Northern Circuit as Judge, and in the month of September 
found him calm and composed. He was now in the habit of 
taking long walks in the fields; and, avoiding politics but 
joining freely in professional gossip about silk gowns, special 
retainers, fees, verdicts, remanets, and references, he almost 
seemed himself again. His recovery proceeded steadily, and 

Jan., 1837. at the Opening of the next Session of Parliament he returned 
to London in full vigour of body and mind. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 479 

Although his sense of wrong remained alta mente reposfum, CHAP. 
the impetuosity of his resentment had subsided, and he could ' 

" bide his time." In the House of Lords he sat on the Minis- a.d. 1837. 
terial benches, and he talked familiarly, if not cordially, with 
Melbourne and the other members of the Government. As 
yet, although he had an intimacy with Lyndhurst pro- 
fessionally, he showed no leaning to the Tory side. At this 
time he thought that his best game would be to form a 
connexion with the Radicals and to become their leader. The 
Whigs he intended to represent as having become listless 
and inefficient. They had fallen into considerable disrepute, 
and if William lY. had lived much longer he might have had 
the gratification of ejecting them. The Eadicals pressing them 
still very unreasonably with motions about household suffrage, 
the ballot, and shortening the duration of Parliaments, they 
rather too peremptorily declared that the Reform Bill was to 
be considered a *' final measure," and Lord John Russell, their 
leader in the House of Commons, acquired the nickname of 
" Finality Jack." Brougham thought for a while that the 
Radicals, who were increasing in influence, might possibly 
come into office in their turn. However, they had no 
confidence in him, and although they were flattered to find 
themselves courted by a man so distinguished, none of them 
would enlist under him as their leader, with one exception. 
It was then said in the Clubs, " Roebuck is a joint, and the 
only joint, in Lord Brougham's tail." * 

Lord Cottenham had got on as Chancellor better than was Lord Cot- 
expected. He proved to be an exceedingly good Equity chaucoiior. 
Judge, and while Brougham was absent he had performed 
tolerably in the House of Lords. But the Lord Chancellor 
was now in a state of great alarm, and not without reason ; 
despising Brougham's law, he stood in cruel awe of his 
sarcasms, and would rather have submitted to any insult 
than enter into a personal encounter witli him. 

But Lord Langdalc, ]\I.R., was more to bo pitied. During 

* This phraseolor^ nrii^inatod from "Walter Scott's description of a Higliland 
chieftain ''putting on hi.s tail" when he mustered lii.s cliin in military array. 
Hence the Iri.-ih members introduced into the House of Commons by O'Councll 
were called his tail, each of them being reckoned as a joint. 



480 EEIGN OF WILLIAM lY. 

CHAP, tlie negotiation for his promotion it had been kept a strict 
' secret from him that he was expected to be the champion 
A.D. 1837. of the Government against Brougham. In truth, he had no 
taste for pubKc display. He would have preferred the KoUs 
without a peerage, and he never would have accepted a 
peerage upon the condition of becoming a rhetorical gladiator. 
He did not know what was expected of him till he had 
actually taken his seat on the Barons' bench, when he could 
not unpeer himself. He was then in a state of great consterna- 
tion, for "he would as soon have met the devil as Harry 
Brougham." He was unspeakably relieved ior a time by the 
non-attendance of his adversary. Thus was he induced to 
try to speak on the second reading of the '^ Great Seal 
Partition Bill," and his hreah-down was partly ascribed to a 
practical joke, in the shape of a ramour circulated through 
the House that Brougham had arrived in London and was 
hurrying to the House.* Now, when he heard that Brougham 
actually had arrived, and would regularly attend in his place, 
he laid down a resolution to which he strictly adhered, that 
during the Session he would remain silent, contenting himself, 
upon a division, with supporting the Government either by 
his vote or his proxy. 
Approach- William IV. was approaching his end without being able 
wniiamiv. ^^ restore the Tories to his councils, and the thoughts of all 
were directed to the new reign. The Princess Victoria, the 
undoubted heir to the Crown, had been reared in great 
privacy, and nothing was known of her political principles 
or propensities. The Tories founded their hopes upon the 
natural instinct of royalty; the Whigs trusted to the feud 
between the little Court of the Princess and that of the King, 
which might incline her to like those whom he detested ; the 
Eadicals did not despair of captivating royal favour by 
declaring violently against the aristocracy and the wealthy 
hourgeoisie, whom they charged with encroaching both on 
the Crown and on the people; and there was a clique 
looking for promotion under Sh John Conroy, Equerry to the 

* If this be true, it must have been contrived by Lyndhurst, who delighted 
much in a mixture of malice and fun to be administered to a poUtical 
enemy. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 481 

Duchess of Kent, wlio tliey supposed might be made Prime CHAP. 
Minister on the accession of her daughter. There was another ' 



individual — or in his own opinion "Great Power" in the a.d. 1837. 
State — who considered it not impossible, nor very improbable, 
that a different arrangement from any of these might take 
place on a demise of the Crown ; this was Lord Brougham, 
who supposed that the Princess Victoria, having necessarily 
heard so much of him, might have formed as high an opinion 
of him as the Princess Charlotte had done, and, like that 
discerning member of the house of Brunswick, might wish 
to have him for her chief adviser. 

In the prospect of the coming change a cessation of party 
hostilities in Parliament took place. Brougham laid on the 
table of the House of Lords three important bills Avhich he 
had formerly introduced : *' To promote National Education," 
" To establish Local Courts," and " To put an end to Plu- 
ralities in the Church." * But he never moved the second 
reading of any of them ; and, contenting himself with irre- 
gularly making a few interlocutory observations every evening 
when the House met, he reserved the great efforts for which 
his long retirement had prepared him till the effect of what 
was said and done might be more accurately foreseen. 

When Queen Victoria was at last proclaimed — to do away 20th Juno. 
with the notion which had got abroad that he had been in Accession ot 
very bad odour at Court, and that this had been the cause of torhi" 
his exclusion from his office — Brouo:ham was the loudest Brougham's 

IT 1 . 11 panegyric 

in commemoratmg and extollmg the vu-tues and amiable upon his 
qualities of the deceased sovereign : — masterr^ 

Lord Brougham. — " The situation I had the honour of holding 
in the councils of his late Majesty during a considerable part 
of his reign forbids me to be silent on the present occasion 
[address to her Majesty on her accession]. In all that has been 
said in his praise I fully agree, and I particularly honour what 
I have had the best opportunity of observing, his gentle disposi- 
tion, his inflexible love of justice, and the rare candour by which 
his character was distinguished. It is wise and appropriate to 
the present occasion to reflect, not only on the virtues of the 
man, but also on the glorious, the beneficent, and the auspicious 



♦ 36 Hansard, 79. 
VOL. Vlir. 2 I 



482 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
VI. 

A.D. 1837. 



Melbourne 
continues 
Prime 
Minister. 



attributes of Ms reign ; glorious, because it was distinguisbed by 
tbe maintenance of peace abroad and tranquillity at borne; 
beneficent, because it was distinguisbed by bestowing tbe most 
important boon wbicb a sovereign could give to or witbbold from 
bis people — a wise amelioration of tbe laws, and a well-considered 
improvement in tbe institutions of tbe country ; and auspicious, 
in tbe earnest it gave of still greater improvements ; greater tbey 
could not be, but tbey migbt be increased so as to diffuse more 
widely tbe blessings of tbose laws and institutions among tbe 
people. Tbese are pledges wbicb bave descended witb the crown 
to ber Majesty tbe Queen Victoria; and I sincerely join with 
your Lordships in hoping that ber Majesty's reign may be long 
and prosperous, and that in it, by the blessing of God and the 
wisdom of Parliament, these pledges may be redeemed." * 

Instead of becoming Prime Minister, Sir John Conroy 
retired into Wales, and a handsome annuity being settled 
upon him, he continued to reside there ever after. 

This arrangement left tbe field open to Brougham, but the 
next blasted all his hopes. The Queen " sent for " Mel- 
bourne, and for years he continued to exercise all the prero- 
gatives of the Crown in her name, subject only to the control 
of Parliament. She had a sort of filial affection and reve- 
rence for him, and she showed that she was pleased with his 
captivating manners and with the principles of government 
with which he wished to imbue her. Brougham felt that for 
the present all possibility of his being in office was gone. 

He bore this shock much better than the loss of the Great 
Seal when Lord Cottenham was made Chancellor. Indeed 
his manner at this time was cool, collected, and dignified. 
He continued to sit on the Ministerial side of the house, and 
he kept up a speaking acquaintance with his old colleagues 
when he encountered them in public, but he long absolutely 
refused to meet any of them in society, and he not only 
would not interchange visits with them,, but he would not 
enter any room where there was a risk of coming in contact 
with any of them. In his own mind he had vowed their 
political destruction, and be was indefatigable in the efforts 
he used to accomplish his object. 

In the House of Lords he obtained a most wonderful 



38 Hansnrd, 1552. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 483 

ascendancy, which he was ready at every favourable moment ^■?4""^' 
to turn against the Government. Lyndhurst, seeing that 



Brougham was now in reality a firm ally, no longer fought a.u. 1837. 
with him, but, on the contrary, flattered him on all occa- Brougham's 
sions. For conveniently laying down the law in debate frthe^"^"^ 
Brougham now assumed, and was long permitted to enjoy, un- ^°^Jf^ °^ 
limited licence. Cottenham would sometimes venture to doubt, 
or to qualify, some of his most extravagant doctrines, but in 
so hesitating and timid a manner as to persuade the Lords that 
Brougham had said nothing that could be justly controverted. 
Langdale remained dumb. Lyndhurst loudly cheered. 

The nondescript ex-Chancellor likewise made himself 
formidable by a lavish distribution among all the members 
of the House of compliments as well as sarcasms ; and I am 
ashamed to say that not only were the latter dreaded, but 
the former were eagerly coveted. Nearly all who took part 
in a debate, not only lawyers but bishops, military men and 
civilians of all parties, looked out with the utmost anxiety to 
the dole he was to mete out to them. But while he gave 
pain and pleasure to individual peers by offending or soothing 
their self-love, he influenced no votes. The practised rheto- 
rician seemed entirely void of sincerity, and after the division 
he was regarded with little more respect than a conjurer who 
has played tricks which excited the wonder of all who beheld 
them. Nor had his orations more influence out of doors. He 
was much talked of, abused, caricatured, and laughed at, but, 
although he had some admirers, he had no followers. 

At the meeting of the new Parliament elected on the Brougham 
Queen's accession, Brougham, still sitting on the JMinisterial J!,^^-^,'st the 
side, took a most determined part against the Government, Govem- 
and showed particular hostility to the Court, as if offended the Court. 
by personal slight. He very early denounced those who 23rd Nov. 
had contended (I think very reasonably) that a fair oppor- 
tunity should be given to test the working of the Keform Bill 
before any further organic change was hazarded. Said ho : — 

" The mere corrections and amendments in the details of the 
bill will not suffice to render it effectual for gaining the great 
object in view by those who framed the bill, by those who sup- 
ported it, and by those who adopted it, viz., the securing to tlio 

2 I 2 



484 



KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
VI. 

A.D. 1837. 



people of this country a full and free representation in the 
Commons House of Parliament. Experience has already plainly 
shown the absolute necessity for extending and enlarging the 
measure, especially as to the elective franchise." * 



He began even 



to talk respectfully of the lallot, which 
hitherto he had condemned and ridiculed, t 

The settlement of the Civil List he furiously attacked in 
debate, and he entered on the Journals of the Lords a long 
protest against it. J When a proposal was made to increase 
the allowance of the Duchess of Kent to 30,000Z. a year he was 
very bitter and sarcastic because the Tories supported it : — 

" In the present state of parties there may be a conflict of 
rivalry between them, they may wish to outbid one another in 
the disposal of the income of the people, to show their loyalty. I 
am well aware of the universal and ardent desire which prevails 
to make the grant as liberal as possible. I feel great pain, there- 
fore, in making these observations, but no consideration shall 
prevent me from performing an imperative duty. Why should 
we act so precipitately when called upon to make an additional 
provision for the Queen-Mother? [Lord Melbourne. — ' Not Queen- 
Mother, the mother of the Queen.'] Lord Brougham. — I admit 
my noble friend is right. On a point of this sort I humble 
myself before my noble friend. I have no courtier-like culti- 
vation. I am rude of speech. The tongue of my noble friend is 
so well hung, and so well attuned to courtly airs, that I cannot 
compete with him for the prize which he is now so eagerly 
Q. Whether struggling to win. Not being given to glozing and flattery, I may 
say that the Duchess of Kent (whether to be called Queen-Mother 
or mother of the Queen) is nearly connected with the throne ; and 
a plain man like myself, having no motive but to do my duty, 
may be permitted to surmise that any additional provision for 
her may possibly come from the Civil List, which you have so 
lavishly voted." 



he was 
given to 
glozing ? 



* 39 Hansard, 134. 

t Although, to throw odium on the Whigs, he then for a time pretended to 
be ultra-lviulical, he was in his heart rather inclined to Conservatism, and 
he afterwards followed the bent of his inclinations when he took service under 
the Duke of Wellington. During the jjrcsent session of Parliament he 
actually slied tears in the House of Lords, as he deplored the wickedness and 
folly of those who were for revolutionising the country by a new Reform Bill. 
—Note, Ayril, 185i). 

:J: 39 Hansard, 1370. Ho likewise published a report of his speech iu a 
bulky pamphlet. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. . 485 

Lord Melbourne. — " I took the liberty in the noble and learned CHAP. 



Lord's address to suggest that he was confounding two things — 
that he was making a mistake in a matter not wholly immaterial 
in its bearing upon the present question. All must be aware 
that there exists an essential difference between the Queen- 
Mother and the mother of the Queen, although the noble and learned 
Lord said this was a distinction only to be learned in courts — a 
distinction only recognised where there is glozing and flattery — 
where tongues are better hung, as the noble and learned Lord 
elegantly expressed it. I do not exactly know what the noble 
and learned Lord means when he says my tongue is hung ivell. As 
to the glozing and flattering, I must be allowed to say I know no 
man in this country who can more gloze and flatter and bend the 
knee than the noble and learned Lord himself — not one ; and I 
must say that I should feel myself wholly unqualified to compete 
with him in these arts, if, from his example, I should acquire a 
taste for them." 

Lord Brougham. — " I call upon the noble Viscount to produce 
his proofs that I ever in my life was capable of doing that which 
the noble Viscount has chosen to-night, unprovoked, to fling out 
as a charge against me. [Lord Melbourne. — ' Not unprovoked.'] 
I say utterly unprovoked. My noble friend observed, with a 
contemptuous air, that T should not say Queen-Mother, but mother 
of the Queen, as much as intimating, ' Oh, you know nothing of 
these things, you don't speak the language of courts.' I said, 
with much humility. Tar be it from me to enter into competition 
with the noble Viscount, whose tongue is now attuned and hung 
to coui-tly airs.' ^I meant to dwell chiefly ou the attuning of 
the tongue — the new tune, with recent variations, which he has 
learned to sing. But the imputation that I ever stooped to gloze, 
or to bow before, or to flatter any human being, is uttei-ly, abso- 
lutely, and, I will say, notoriously without foundation. I have 
had opportunities to practise such arts, but /have never availed 
myself of them — to the injury of others, to the betrayal of my 
trust, and to my own shame." * 

In this first personal encounter -between the Premier and 
the ex-Chancellor, the former was considered to have the 
advantage. People were well aware of Brougham's powers 
of vituperation — but had not noticed, till it -was pointed 
out, that he was ecpially given to glozing. I caniiot say that 
he flatters, or that he would flatter for any corrupt or sordid 



Yl. 



A.D. 1837. 



3'J Hanaard, 972. 



486 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, purpose — but merely to make a sensation, to show his power, 
' to add to the effect of his sarcasms by contrast, he is at times 
A.D. 1837. extravagantly complimentary. It was said of a very liberal 
bestower of praise that he laid it on with a trowel — 
but Brougham empties a hod-full of it on the head of 
his victim. His success in some instances has been very 
brilliant. 

During the autumn of this year, Brougham found occu- 
pation for his leisure and vent for his spleen in preparing 
for publication a selection of his *' Speeches," in four volumes, 
with " Historical Introductions." His principal object seems 
to have been, not so much to do justice to his own orato- 
rical exertions, as to deal out praise and censure among his 
contemporaries, according as he then conceived that they had 
used him well or ill, and above all to hold up to execration 
the Whig party for having betrayed and abandoned him.* 
The dedication shows the spirit by which he was actuated : — 

TO THE MOST NOBLE 

EICHAED MAEQUESS WELLESLEY, 

SUCCESSIVELY 

THE GOVERNOR GENERAL OF INDIA, 

BRITISH AMBASSADOR IN SPAIN, 

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 

AND 

LORD LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND, 

THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED 

AS A TRIBUTE 

MOST JUSTLY DUE -TO SO ILLUSTRIOUS A STATESMAN ; 

AND IN COMMEMORATION 

OF THE RARE FELICITY OF ENGLAND, 

^ SO RICH IN GENIUS AND CAPACITY FOR AFFAIRS, 

THAT SHE CAI^ SPARE FROM HER SERVICE 

SUCH MEN AS HIM. 



* I am rather at a loss to account for the bad success of the work. I should 
have expected that the sauce yiquante would have given it a relish. Never- 
theless I know, upon the authority of Mr. Black, now M.P. for Edinburgh, 
who was the publisher, that a large proportion of the edition was damasked, 
i.e., passed through a machine, by which small squares are impressed upon 
the printed pages before they are sent to line trunks. 



LIFE OF LOKD BROUGHAM. 487 

There certainly was some originality in making a dedica- CHAP, 
tion the vehicle of sarcasm, and a complaint that the great ' 



talents of Dedicatee and Dedicator were not employed in the a.d. isst. 
public service. Lord Wellesley, once a most distinguished 
statesman, had now fallen into dotage. After the other 
splendid offices which he had filled, he had accepted that of 
Lord Chamberlain, to walk backwards mth a white wand 
before the Queen, and had then quarrelled with the "Whigs 
because they would not make him Duke of Hindostan. A 
strict friendship was now contracted between the two discon- 
tented individuals, founded upon their common hatred of 
that party, which with respect to both had so failed in the 
performance of the sacred duty of rewarding merit. 

As a specimen of his ' Introductions,' I give an extract 
from that to his ' Speech at the Liverpool Election in 1812.' 
Drawing a character of Mr. Creevey, candidate along with him 
in the Whig interest, thus the ex- Whig Lord Chancellor 
speaks of Mr. Creevey and the Whigs : — 

" He despised the timidity which so often paralysed their 
movements ; he disliked the jealousies, the personal predilections 
and jDrejudices which so frequently distracted their councils ; he 
abhorred the spirit of intrigue, which not rarely gave some in- 
ferior man, or some busy meddling woman, probably unprincipled, 
a sway in the destiny of the party, fatal to its success, and all but 
fatal to its character ; he held in utter ridicule the squeamishness, 
both as to persons and things, which emasculated so many of the 
genuine, regular Whigs ; and no considerations of interest — no 
relations of friendship^no regard for party discipline — could 
prevail with him to pursue that course so ruinous to the AVhig 
opposition, of half-and-half resistance to the Government ; march- 
ing to the attack with one eye turned to the Court, and one 
askance to the country, nor ever making war upon tlie Ministry 
without regarding the time when themselves might occupy the 
position, now the object of assault." 

If all this were true, it surely comes very ungraciously 
from one who had been a member of the Whig party above 
twenty years, and wlio, within two years, had passionately 
wished to continue in it. The lady he so uncourteously 
refers to, is evidently Lady Holland, the wife of his friend 
Lord Holland, liis early-patron on his first coming to London 



488 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1837. 



A.D. 1838. 

Brougham 
co-operates 
with the 
Tories, pre- 
tending to 
he Radical. 



— at whose hospitable board I have often met him. Although 
Lady Holland certainly had considerable influence in Whig 
comisels, I do not believe that it was ever exercised against 
Brougham. But he was of a different opinion, and he would 
noA^er afterwards speak to her, for although he could forgive 
Lord Melbourne, he could not forgive her, who was sup- 
posed to have been Lord Melbourne's adviser in excluding 
him. 

In the Session of 1838, Brougham carried on very active 
hostilities against Lord Melbourne's Grovernment, still showing 
Radical colours, but more and more sympathising and coming 
to an implied understanding with the Duke of Wellington, 
Lord Lyndhurst, and the Tories. They accused us of a 
disposition to revolutionize both Church and State from the 
proposed measure about Church Rates, and the practical 
admission of Roman Catholics to a fair share of power and 
patronage in Ireland, whereas Brougham still denounced us 
as Reactionaries, Finalists, and Mock Reformers, because we 
resisted for the present any farther organic change. Being 
taunted by Lord Melbourne for his bitter opposition to those 
with whom he had so long acted, and whom he had so zealously 
patronised in the year 1835, when he was no longer in office, 
and they were pursuing the same policy as at present, he 
insisted that they had diverged, while he was marching 
straight forward. 

" My Lords," said he, " I indignantly and peremptorily deny 
that the motive or principle of my conduct is changed. But I 
know that the changed conduct of others has compelled me to 
oppose them in order that I may not change my own principles. 
Do the Ministers desire to know what will restore me to their 
support, and make me once more fight zealously in their ranks, 
as I once fought with them against the majority of your Lord- 
ships ? I will tell them. Let them retract their declaration 
against Eeform, or, without any retractation, only bring forward 
liberal and constitutional measures, and they will have no more 
zealous suj)porter than myself But in the mean time I hurl 
defiance at the head of my accuser — I repeat it — I hurl at his 
head this defiance — I defy him to point out any, the slightest, 
indication of any one part of my public conduct having even for 
one instant been affected in any manner of way by feelings of a 



LIFE OF LOKD BKOUGHAM. 489 

private and personal nature, or "been regulated by any one consi- CHAP, 
deration except the sense of what I owe to my own principles and 
to the interests of the country."* 

It is possible that he had worked himself into the belief 
that he was acting consistently and from purely disinterested 
motives ; but, if so, he stood alone in this belief, for all the 
rest of mankind agreed that revenge was the main-spring 
of his conduct, and that his only consideration was how he 
might most spite and damage those by whom he had been 
ill used. The Radicals making great play against the 
Government by the opposition which Ministers offered to the 
ballot — although he was one of the framers of the Reform 
Bill who had peremptorily objected to the proposal of his 
colleagues Lord Durham and Sir James Graham to admit 
the ballot, and so late as his famous Scottish " Progress," 
complaining of the unreasonable Radicals, he had intimated 
an opinion that rather too much had been done in the way 
of innovation — he now expressly recommended the ballot, 
and told the Lords that — 

" unless their Lordships made up their minds either to this mea- 
sure, or. some measure of this sort, for the protection of e]ectors, 
it would be carried against them. The time appeared to him to 
be come when something must be done. The sooner, therefore, 
their Lordships made up their minds to some such measure as 
this, the better it would be for them." j 

The Tories did not 'vocally cheer, but they showed by their 
radiant countenances and sparkling eyes with what delight 
they heard observations which had such a tendency to dis- 
parage the Whigs, to deprive the Government of Liberal 
support, and to accelerate their own return to power. 
Although they and their irregular ally appeared on opposite 
sides of the House, there was between them, during the 
debate, a quick interchange of nods and winks and wreathed 
smiles, followed by much approving raillery and cordial gra- 
tulation when the debate was over. 

. The great practical measure of this Session was the Bill Canada Bin. 
for the Better Government of the Canadas. There had been 
an open rebellion in Lower Canada, and its Legislative As- 
* 40 Hansard, G92. t Ibid., 1220. 



490 



REIGN OF QUEEN" VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1838. 



Brougham 
denounces 
the Whigs 
as having 
become 
courtiers. 



sembly had tlirown off allegiance to the English Crown. 
The insurgents had been defeated, and tranquillity had been 
restored ; but a change in the mode of ruling the colony 
was universally allowed to be indispensable, and there was a 
necessity for conferring extraordinary powers on Lord Durham, 
who in the emergency had patriotically agreed to go out as 
Governor. Even the Duke of Wellington and Lord Lynd- 
hurst concurred in the principle of the bill, although they 
censured some of its details. But Brougham furiously opposed 
the bill, and every clause of it, — his animosity on this occa- 
sion being sharpened by a special grudge fostered by him 
against Lord Durham, who in the year 1834: had charged 
him with having become a very cool Keformer, and " little 
better than a Conservative." 

In a great speech upon the subject which, according to 
his custom, he published as a pamphlet, with a Preface 
praising himself and vilifying others, he gave a narrative of 
the measures of the Government at home to meet the spirit 
of insubordination in Canada, and he thus censured their 
inaction in the summer of 1837 : — 

" It would seem that just about this time some wonderful 
change had come over the minds of the Ministers, depriving them 
of their memory, and lulling even their senses to repose — that 
something had happened which cast them into a sweet slumber — 
a deep trance — such as physicians tell us not only suspends all 
recollection of the past, but makes men impervious to impressions 
from surrounding objects through the senses. Could this have 
arisen from the deep grief into which m}^ noble friend and his 
colleagues were known to have been plunged by the decease of 
their kind and generous master ? No doubt that feeling must have 
had its day — or its hour — but it passed swiftly away ; it is not in 
the nature of grief to endure for ever. Then how came it that 
the trance continued ? Was it that the decease of one monarch 
is necessarily followed by the accession of another? Oh, doubt- 
less its pleasing endurance must have been caused by the eleva- 
tion of their late gracious master's illustrious successor — pro- 
longing the suspension of the faculties which grief had brought 
on — but changing it into that state, inexpressibly delicious, which 
was suited to the circumstances so interesting of the new reign ; 
or could it bo that the ^\'hig party having for near a hundred 
years been excluded from the banquet of royal favour, and now 



VI. 



A.D. 1838. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 491 

sitting down to the ricli repast with an appetite the growth of a CHAP 
centiuy's fast, were unable to divert their attention from so plea- 
surable and unusual an enjoyment to mere vulgar matters of public 
duty, and bring their faculties, steeped in novel delight, to bear 
upon points so distant as Canada — affairs so trivial as the tranquil- 
lity of the most important province of the Crown and the peace 
of this countiy — perhaps of the world? All these inconsider- 
able interests being in jeopardy, were they insufficient to awaken 
our rulers from their luxurious stupor ? . . . . They rush 
unheeding, unhesitating, unreflecting, into resolutions upon which 
the wisest and readiest of mankind could hardly pause and ponder 
too long. But when all is determined — when every moment's 
delay is fraught with peril — then comes uncertainty and irresolu- 
tion. They never pause till the season has arrived for action, 
and when all faltering, even for the twinkling of an eye, is fatal, 
then it is that they relapse into supineness and inactivity — look 
around them and behind them, and everywhere but before them, 
and sink into repose as if all had been accomplished at the mo- 
ment when everything remains to be done. If I were to ransack 
all the records to which I have ever had access of human conduct 
in administering great affairs, whether in the annals of our own 
times or in ages that are past, I should in vain look for a more 
striking illustration of the Swedish Chancellor's famous saying to 
his son, departing to assist at a congress of statesmen, ' J, fill mi^ 
ut videos quantuld sajpientid regatur mundus.' " * 

This somewhat cumbrous jocularity may have been pro- 
duced by pure patriotism, but I must confess it seems to me 
rather an ebullition of envy, and that the pseudo-patriot was 
resenting his own exclusion from the luxurious banquet spread 
for the famished Whigs at the accession of Queen Victoria. 

He had spoken early in the evening, and as soon as he 
finished he went home to meet a party of dependents whom 
he had invited to hear his speech, and to dine with him. 
His absence from the House was severely animadverted 
upon by those who followed in the debate. Lord jMelbourne 
spoke of " the torrent of invective and sarcasm with which 
the noble and learned Lord had overwhelmed the officers of 
her ^lajesty's Government, and that most laboured and most 
extreme concentration of bitterness which had been poured 
forth on this occasion." Lord Glenelg, whom he had per- 

* 40 Hansard, 202-207. 



492 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP, sonally attacked, joined in the regret that the noble and 
' learned Lord had been pleased to remove from the scene of 
A.D. 1838. action. ^' Ahiit, evasit, erupit. Having vented his thunder- 
bolts with no sparing hand, he shows that he is capable, like 
the thnnderer, of veiling himself in clouds." * 

At the sitting of the House the following evening. Brougham 
attempted to reply to these observations, pleading indispo- 
sition as the cause of his absence-t But I have repeatedly- 
known him follow the same course when he did not mean to 
call for a division. If he had divided against the Canada 
Bill he would have had only two other peers to go below 
the bar along with him. They contented themselves, after 
opposing it in every stage by speeches, with entering a protest 
on the Journal against it. :j: 

The Canada question recurred in various shapes till the 
very end of the Session, and kept Brougham in constant 
employment. He had a prodigious triumph in an illegal 
act of Lord Durham, professing to be under a power of making 
ordinances for the good government of the colony. The 
Governor General had banished to Bermuda certain persons 
concerned in a rebellious insurrection. Now, although he 
might have ordered them to be hanged in Canada, he could 
not lawfully order them to be imprisoned out of Canada. 
Brougham denounced this excess of jurisdiction as a most 
horrible outrage. His law was good, but he could not be 
justified in magnifying the small slip of the Governor General 
into a great crime. Elated with this success, he went on 
to contend that all Lord Durham's ordinances were unlawful, 
and he laid down various propositions, both with respect to 
common law and the construtition of Acts of Parliament, 
which were wholly untenable. But neither the Lord Chan- 
cellor nor the Master of the Rolls would venture to contradict 
him, and Lyndlmrst cunningly observed that, concurring in 
the illegality of the banishment to Bermuda, he thought it 
more prudent to abstain from giving any opinion upon the 
other legal points mooted by his noble and learned friend. 

* 40 Hansard, 243. t Ibid., 249. X Ibid., 886. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 493 

Erom the beginning to tlie end of this Session, Lyndhurst CHAP, 
made it a rule to remain silent during the debate, finding it ' 



a more convenient course privately to incite Brougham and a.d. i838. 
to praise him. 

In addition to his old annual bills on education, charities, 
and other subjects, Brougham now launched a new one — to 
give to his Judicial Committee the power of extending copy- 
right to authors when the statutable term has expired ; but 
as it was universally scouted, he allowed it to drop after the 
first reading, and he has never again brought it forward. 
Such a discretionary power to tamper with the rights of indi- 
viduals and of the public could not be endured in a free 
country. 

While Parliament was sitting and he was speaking so Brougham's 
copiously. Brougham wrote more than could be expected from ^^ith"his 
a laborious professional bookmaker who never rises from his pen. 
desk. Besides revised editions of his speeches, he indited 
many articles in newspapers, magazines, and reviews, and he 
brought out several pamphlets to gratify his S23leen against 
the Court and the aristocracy. 

He likewise most usefully and laudably employed himself 
as President of the Society of Useful Knowledge. Under his 
auspices this Society flourished much for several years, and, 
selling excellent treatises at a low price, was of essential 
service to the middle and lower orders. Its most successful 
publications were the * Penny Magazine ' and the ' Penny 
Cyclopaedia.' The latter, from having often consulted it, I 
can pronounce a very valuable addition to any library. But Brougham's 
the Society at last became bankrupt, and was obliged to be phUoso^hy 
dissolved for want of funds by publishing, at its own risk, and the 
Lord Brougham's * Political Philosophy,' the copyright of of the"uso- 
which ho had very generously presented to the Society. This ["! ^''^^^' 
I do seriously and sincerely think is a most excellent treatise, dety. 
and I have bond fide read it through with pleasure and ad- 
vantage ; but I could never find more than one other person 
who had undergone the same labour, and the fact was that 
unaccountably it fell still-born from the press. Anticipating 
a great sale from the reputation of the author, an edition of 



494 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1838. 



The success 
of his 

' Sketches of 
Statesmen.' 



A.D. 1839. 



several thousand had been printed off, and tliey almost all 
went to the trunk-makers.* The Society had been before in 
pecuniary distress, and this blow proved its death. 

Misfortunes never come single. Of Greek, Brougham, like 
all others educated in Scotland, had only acquired a slender 
knowledge. But he flattered himself that he thoroughly 
understood, as well as relished, Demosthenes. In this belief 
he ventured to publish a new translation, by himself, of the 
' De CoroDa,' with notes. His ambitious temerity was dread- 
fully punished; for there came out critiques upon it — par- 
ticularly an admirable one in the * Times ' newspaper, by a 
profound Grecian — which exposed him most unmercifully, 
showing that in various instances he had mistaken the mean- 
ing of the original, and that he was ignorant not only of the 
niceties of the Attic dialect, but even of well-known facts in 
Grecian history. Of all his literary failures this is the one 
which he took most to heart. 

But he might have been comforted by the brilliant success 
of his ^ Sketches of the Statesmen and Philosophers in the 
Eeign of George III.,' now begun, and published the following 
year, when they at once seized the public attention. Here 
he really was at home, and he wrote of men with whom he 
had conversed, and whose merits and defects he was well able 
to appreciate and to describe. The best of these sketches first 
appeared in the ' Edinburgh Keview,' He afterwards repub- 
lished them in volumes, with others of very inferior merit, 
including such characters as Frederick the Great, the Empress 
Katherine of Kussia, and Voltaire, with respect to whom he 
could state no new facts, and his observations were either 
vapid or fantastical. 

When the Session of 1839 arrived, Brougham continued to 
speak from the ministerial side of the House ; but he now in 
all parliamentary tactics openly and avowedly coalesced with 
the Opposition, for the purpose of expelling the Government. 
He no longer confined himself to speeches which might indi- 
rectly disparage the Whigs and bring them into public odium, 



* I have bccu told that the book had miicli better success in Germany, and 
that a German translation of it was in great demand for two successive 
Leipsic fairs. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 495 

but, tliro\ying out now and then a little bit of innocent Eadi- ^^^^• 
calism, he earnestly and vigorously made or seconded motions ' 



in concert with the Tory leaders. What his hopes or wishes a.d. 1839. 
then were, in contemplation of a change of Ministers, I am 
unable to conjecture. Perhaps he did not look farther than 
the full gratification of his blind revenge. 

When he least expected it the long-desired consummation Ministeiiai 
seemed to have arrived. The Government had been going on 
very smoothly in the Lords. The Duke of Wellington declared 
to those in his confidence that he had felt rather uncomfortable 
in 1835, when Peel was Prime Minister ; that he would not 
be at all gratified by seeing such a state of things restored ; 
and as the Queen preferred the Whigs, that he had no objec- 
tion to their remaining in office if he could induce them to be 
tolerably moderate in their measures of reform. He had, 
therefore, discountenanced the intrigues between Lyndhurst 
and Brougham to precipitate a change of Government. But 
in the Lower House, where, since the passing of the Eeform 
Bill, the Whigs had hitherto been strong, a measure on which 
they staked their ministerial existence met with such opposi- 
tion, that they deemed it decent and necessary to resign. 
This was a bill for superseding the Legislative Assembly of 
Jamaica, the second reading of which was carried only by a 
majority of five, although dying members, and members whose 
near relatives were lying dead, were carried into the lobby to 
make up this majority. 

When Brougham heard Melbourne announce that on ac- 7th May. 
count of what he considered the adverse division in the other Brougham's 
House, her Majesty's Ministers had unanimously tendered supposed 
their resi2:nation, and only held their offices till their succes- f^^^ °^ ^^^'" 

• 1 1 -f. T 1 • bourne. 

sors were appointed, he maniiested exuberant exultation, and 
seemed to indicate that then to die would be happiness. 
However, he decently tranquillised himself and magnani- 
mously 

*' entreated their Lordships, who had imder their care the morals, 
the inbtrnction, and tlie welfare of the people, not to allow any 
mere party feeling, any tempwary, and it may be only momentary, 
gratification to interfere with their highest duty. He considered 
his Bill for the liepeal of the Beer Act to be of more import- 



496 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1839. 



ance tlian any change of ministry ; and althougli, tinder existing 
circnmstances, he would postpone the second reading, he should 
persist, ivhoever might hold the office of Prime Minister, in endea- 
vouring to obtain the repeal of a measure which he believed to 
be permanently fraught with mischief to the character of the 
country." 

Alas ! he had used prophetic words. The exquisite " grati- 
fication " which he felt proved to be " temporary " and 
almost " momentary." By the clumsy mismanagement of Sir 
Eobert Peel in forming the new Government he failed, and 
the Whigs remained in office above two years longer. 

Brougham, I believe, had an expectation during this crisis 
that, although Lyndhurst must have had the Great Seal, some 
high office would be offered to himself, who had so essentially 
contributed to the victory. However, his disappointment in 
this respect caused him little grief compared with what he 
suffered froni seeing the restoration of the Whig Cabinet, 
14th May. from whicli he was ejected. At first he was so overpowered 
that, to the astonishment of every one, he preserved a deep 
silence during the whole of the evening when Lord Melbourne 
announced his return to office, and explained how it arose 
from a demand having been made upon the Queen that she 
should dismiss all the ladies of her bedchamber. But when 
the subject was revived by a question from Lord Winchelsea, 
Brougham poured forth a torrent of virulent invective against 
the Whigs, their supporters, the Ladies of the Bedchamber, 
and the poor Queen. Said he : — 



Melbourne 
restored. 

31st May. 



Brougham 
on the Bed- 
chamber 
ladies. 



" The private, individual, personal feelings of that illustrious 
Princess have been made the topic of every riotous meeting, of 
every mob, and of all the demagogues who have set to work to 
prop a sinking Administration. Their only cry is the Queen ! the 
Queen ! the Queen ! This is the bedchamber crisis. Sir Robert 
Peel's formation of a Government has been defeated by two ladies 
of the bedchamber. From all I have ever heard or dreamed of, 
I never expected to see an}-, and above all a Whig, Government 
based on a bedchamber question — a question of personal feeling 
towards the Sovereign. That is the ground for resuming office, 
after a plain confession that they have lost the confidence of the 
Commons. The confidence of 3"our Lordships' house, alas ! they 
never possessed. The Government have resumed office only 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 497 

because the Queen lias refused to dismiss two ladies of her bed- CHAP, 
chamber. They stand by the Queen, without the confidence of 
Parliament. Will this standing by the Queen get back public ^ ^ -^gog 
confidence ? I do not believe a word of it. The attempt to pass a 
falsehood on the nation has signally failed. Considering what an 
inexperienced person the Queen is, it should be imputed to no fault 
of her own. She has reigned barely two years. But those who are 
about her are bound to inform her of the solemn responsibility 
thrown upon her by the ancient and established principles of the 
Constitution. There should be no force. Her feelings should be 
treated wdth all imaginable tenderness. Even where she may 
be wrong, every conceivable excuse should be made for her ; the 
most profound respect and veneration of the most devoted cour- 
tier should be shown ; but duty remains towering above all other 
and pettier considerations. If the Crown fail, as fail it must, a 
bad service will have been rendered by bad counsellors, bad 
friends, bad flatterers, and worthless parasites. Let her not be 
guided by mere lovers of place — Tsdshing to keep place, or only 
hungering and thirsting after it — whose appetencies have been 
sharpened by possession, or to whose desire distance makes it 
more sweet." 

Thus continued to roll on almost interminably the turgid 
stream of his vituperative eloquence. Hansard says, and I 
make no doubt truly, *• The noble and learned Lord sat down 
amid loud and continued cheers from the Opposition benches."* 
However, it seems that the * Observer,' a G-overnment news- 
paper, in commenting upon this speech, had the audacity to 
make observations, of which Brougham thus complained to 
the House of Lords as a breach of privilege : — 

" ' We are compelled to state,' says the libeller (now what com- Brougham 
pelled a man to state a o-ross falsehood I cannot tell, except it co'npiams 

^ -I • \7 7 -7 7/'7t4- ^^ '^^ breach 

may be his nature), ^that there was not a single member of the House of piivileo-e 
who did not leave it disgusted with the speech' Not a single member ! i" ^^ing li- 
My noble friend near me (Lord Melbourne) might feel disgusted ; 
but certainly there were some besides myself who did not leave 
the House from disgust." 

He went on to complain of other statements, " that he had 
shown an inveterate hatred to the monarchy and personal 
disrespect to the Queen," which he solemnly disclaimed. He 

♦ 47 IInn.sni(l, llGi. 
YOL. VIII. 2 K 



498 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CKAP. 
YI. 



A.D. 1839. 



His grand 
motion as 
Leader of 
the Toi*y 
Opposition. 



concluded without moving to send the libeller to Newgate, or 
making any other motion. 

All the Peers present remained silent except the Marquess 
of Londonderry, an ultra-Tory Peer, who said that " although 
the noble and learned Lord had long taken a line in politics 
which the friends of the monarchy deplored, he had at last 
made a speech which deserved to be received with universal 
acclamation." * Such praise from such a quarter must have 
suggested to the object of it the alarming question, whether, 
notwithstanding his own consciousness of perfect consistency, 
he might not have got into a false position. He really was 
now defending for the Tories that of which they themselves 
were ashamed. Peel made a blunder when he insisted on the 
removal of all the ladies belonging to the household on a 
change of Government ; and Peel himself afterwards said that 
he only meant to stipulate for the jpower of doing so, without 
meaning to exercise it. Unless the Ladies of the Bedchamber 
were the Queen's constitutional advisers, it seems strange to 
say that they must all be removed on every change of 
Ministers. The principle on which such a rule must rest 
Avould go to the preposterous and revolting length of requiring 
that in a female reign the Sovereign should liave a new 
Consort as often as she has a new Prime Minister. This 
liberty of retaining mere personal attendants, which Brougham 
represented as so dangerous to public liberty, has been reserved 
to the Queen, and has been exercised by her on similar oc- 
casions ever since. Yet we still consider ourselves a free 
people. 

From the restoration of Lord Melbourne's Government, 
Brougham may be considered the leader of the Opposition in 
the House of Lords. Lyndhurst felt no jealousy of liim, full 
well knowing that his aid would be very useful in the assault, 
and that the Treasury being stormed, he had no chance of 
participating in the spoil. 

At last Brougham brought forward a motion on which he 
was promised the wliole strength of the Opposition, and which 
he thought must be fatal to the " Bedchamber Government." 



* 47 Hansard, 1232. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 499 

Certain political trials had been conducted in Ireland of no CHAP, 
great importance, and, after conviction, certain of tlie de- ' 



fendants had been pardoned upon facts disclosed after the a.d. 1839. 
verdict. The charge against the Government was that the 
Irish Attorney General had improperly conducted the prose- 
cutions under instructions from the Government, and that 
the pardons had been granted without the presiding Judge 
having been consulted. The debate was ushered in by a 
flourish of trumpets, frequently repeated, to awaken public 
attention. First came the intention to give notice of motion ; 
then the notice of motion; then the postponement of the 
notice ; then the further postponement and peremptory fixing 
of it for a future day ; each accompanied with a long speech 
proclaiming the importance of the motion, and shadowing forth 
its probable consequences. When the portentous evening 6th Aug. 
arrived, the orator had a very large assemblage of his friends, 
male and female, in the House of Lords, to admire him, and 
a Tory icliip had secured a decided majority of Peers to vote 
for him. I copy the prooemium from the " corrected report " 
of his speech, which he published. It is so very laboured and 
so highly finished, in his peculiar style, that it may, like the 
famous peroration to his defence of Queen Caroline, have 
been rewi'itten by him seventeen times. Confidently antici- 
pating a majority, he thought that he had reached a memorable 
epoch in the history of English party warfare, and he was 
determined to show himself equal to this great argument. 
Having slowly risen, solemnly looked round, and taken some 
time to adjust, not his toga, but his Ettriclc cJiecJc troivsers, he 
thus began : — 

" If, in addressing your Lordships, I looked only to the para- 
mount — perhaps the unparalleled — importance of the case which 
I am about to bring under your consideration, as it regards the 
policy, the welfare, and the constitution of this country, I should 
feel much less anxiety tlian I experience at this moment. But I 
recollect that, unhappily for me, and perhaps unfortunately for 
the question, it is one of which the indisputable importance is 
even exceeded by the great interest which it excites ; I mean not 
merely that natural, legitimate, and unavoidable interest Avhich 
it must raise amongst the people of the country to which it more 
particularly relates— I allude not merely to the interest which it 

2 K 2 



500 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



VI 

A.D. 1839 



CHAP, excites among your Lordships, as the guardians of the pure admi- 
nistration of justice, you yourselves being supreme judges in a 
court the most distinguished in all the world ; but I am pointing 
to the personal and the party feelings — the heats naturally kindled 
among those who on the one hand may suppose that I stand here 
as the accuser of an individual or of the Government, and amongst 
those who, on the other hand, may conclude that the parties stand 
here placed on their personal defence; and worse than this, I 
allude, with feelings of a truly painful nature, to that interest 
which this question is calculated to raise, and which I wish that 
any effort of mine could lull or delay — I may be supposed to 
come forward for the purpose of lending myself to personal views, 
and not merely in the discharge of an imperative public duty. 
But if the experience which your Lordships have had of me, 
while practising before you as a minister of justice at your bar, 
or as presiding, so far as any Peer can preside, over your judicial 
proceedings in the House, — if the whole tenor of my not short 
public life of 30 years and upwards (in which I have constantly 
— it is perhaps rather, the result of good fortune than arising 
from any merit of my own, by accident I might perhaps say, 
without deviation or change, or shadow of a turning — proceeded 
in the same course, and been guided steadily by the same uniform 
principles) — if this gives your Lordships no pledge that I appear 
on the present occasion only to discharge a public and a great 
responsible duty, then what further pledge can I give, what more 
can I say than this ? Mark how I, this day, perform the duty 
which I have undertaken ; and then whosoever of the accusers 
may be disappointed, or whosoever of those who are on their 
defence may be chagrined — whatsoever party feelings may be 
excited, or whatsoever party objects may be frusti-ated by my 
discharge of public duty, at least I shall be able to appeal to your 
Lordships for my acquittal from the charge of having made my- 
self, on this occasion, what I never did before, an engine of party 
feeling or an instrument of personal attack." * 

He then proceeded for three hours to detail his facts very 
mimitely and to read long extracts from printed evidence. 
His dullness was only relieved by a few passing sarcasms on 
old friends. t What he sought to prove was that the trials 

* 49 Hansard, 1275. From a corrected report published by Eidgway. 

t I ought to be a corajietent judge, for as Attorney General I was directed 
to watch the speech, tiiat I might give some hints to the Blarquess of Nor- 
manby, who was to answer it. 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 501 

had been improperly conducted and that the defendants had CHAP, 
been improperly pardoned, and he concluded with moving a ' 



long string of inculpatory resolutions, the cliief of which was, a.d. 1839. 
" that a convicted criminal ought not to be pardoned without 
consulting the Judge by whom he was tried." 

Lord Lyndhurst took no part in the debate, contenting 
himself with hoimding on his noble and learned friend. Lords 
Normanby and Melbourne ably opposed the resolutions, con- 
tending that the Government had acted before, during and 
after the trials, according to the well-known maxims of the 
law and the constitution, and that the motion was a mere 
ebullition of spleen and factiousness. Although Brougham 
was informed by the Tory whippers-in that they had a large 
majority who were impatient for the division, and that several 
of their men, who had not been able to get pairs, could 
hardly be prevailed upon to remain longer in the House, 
he indulged in a very long reply, which he at last con- 
cluded with another panegyric on his own consistency. Having 
enumerated the good measures of the Government while he 
belonged to it, he continued : — • 

" Moreover, I have uniformly adhered to one political party; 
and if at the end of this long period I have found myself under 
ihe painful necessity of separating from my former political 
friends, it has been not on personal but public grounds — it 
has been — it has notoriously been — not because / changed, but 
because they have changed their course. AVhen out of the govern- 
ment, in 1835, I zealously supported them; in 1836 I abstained 
from attendance that I might nut embarrass them._ But in 1839, 
when they have utterly forgotten the very name as well as the 
nature of Whigs, then of course my opposition became habitual, 
and I heartily desired to see the end of their reign. These Whig 
ministers under my noble friend, stripping off all decent covering, 
without one rag of public principle of any kind, stand before the 
country, naked, as mere courtiers, mere seekers of loyal favour; 
and do not utter a single whisper to show that they have a single 
principle in their contemplation save the securing a continuance 
of their places by making themselves subservient creatures of the 
palace." 

Upon a division, the resolutions were carried by a majority 



502 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, of 34— tlie numbers being 86 to 52. There were 39 pairs, 
' several of whicb were arranged during the reply.* The vulgar 



A.D. 18S9. custom of loud cheering on the announcement of a majority 
Brougham's against the Government on a party question, which is prac- 
^^^ ^'^ tised in the Commons, was not now resorted to ; but Brougham 
thought this division was tantamount to a vote of want of con- 
fidence by one branch of the legislature, and as the other had 
signified a similar sentiment by the division uj)on the Jamaica 
Bill, he considered an immediate change of administration 
certain. Without any assurance that he himself should be 
included in the new arrangement, he was for the present con- 
tented with being able to say, " I made Melbourne Minister, 
and I have unmade him." 
is fruitless. But he was again doomed to a cruel disappointment, for, 
instead of the expected announcement next day in both 
Houses of Parliament, " that Ministers had resigned, and only 
held their offices till their successors should be appointed," 
not the slightest notice was taken of the vote upon Brougham's 
motion, except by Lord John Kussell in the House of Com- 
mons, who, after stating the Kesolution about " j)^i*doning or 
commuting a sentence without consulting the judge who pre- 
sided at the trial," said : — 

" As this Eesolution affects the ofi&ce which I hold [Secretary 
of State for the Home Department], I must at once say that it pro- 
poses a practice which is utterly inconsistent with that which has 
hitherto been pursued by Secretaries of State in their recommen- 
dations to the Crown, from which it would be exceedingly incon- 
venient to depart, and in which it is not my intention to make 
any alteration whatever. If it were a Bill instead of a Besolution, 
and it had gained the consent of Parliament, then of course I 
should be bound to obey it. But till the law is altered I shall 
consider myself justified in following the practice which has been 
hitherto pursued, not thinking that a vote of either House can 
affect the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy." | 

Thus the Kesolution of the Lords was to be treated as 
waste paper ! 

Brougham himself was the only man who had calculated 
on speedy effects from his victory. The division really 

♦ 49 Hansard, 1275-1385. t 50 Hansard, 2. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 503 

disclosed nothing more than what was before well known, — ■ CHAP. 
that in the House of Lords the Tories had a majority, which ' 

they could command on any question which they deemed a.d. 1839. 
it for the benefit of their party to carry, and the only novelty 
in the last movement consisted in the Tories being led on 
by a new chief. The Government had been considerably 
strengthened in the House of Commons by yielding to a 
measure, of which the Eadicals ought to have the credit^ 
and which has conferred immense social benefit upon the 
world — the Uniform Penny Postage. Melbourne, instead 
of being crushed, seemed to go on with renovated vigour. 

xit the conclusion of the Session, however, there was a 
grand Review in the House of Lords when Brougham con- 
descended to restore the chief command to Lyndhurst, but 
cordially co-operated with him. Lyndhurst, according to 
annual custom, compared the great things which ministers 
had proposed by the Queen's opening speech with their dis- 
comfiture in having the bills they brought in rejected. 

Melbourne, in a very able speech, attempted to prove that 
ministers had failed in carrying their measures by the fac- 
tious opposition offered to them, and particularly instanced 
the bill for reforming the Court of Admiralty. 

" I cannot advert to it," he obsei-ved, "without saying that 
a rejection of that bill by your Lordships was one of the most 
disreputable and unprovoked acts of power that I ever knew to 
be exercised. 1 deeply lament that the hand which destroyed 
ought, in reason and right feeling, to have been stretched out to 
save it." 

Tliis bill, which the public good most urgently required, 
would have been of service to Lushington, the Judge of the 
Court of Admiralty. Lushington had been Brougham's 
bosom friend, and had co-operated with liim in the defence of 
Queen Caroline, but had grievously offended him by persevering 
steadily, as ]\Ieniber for the Tower Hamlets, in supporting 
the Melbourne Government. Without Brougham's opposition 
the Admiralty Court Bill, which passed quietly through the 
Commons, would have i)assed as quietly through the Lords ; 
for Lyndhurst, left to himself, would not have encountered 
the odium which the loss of it would have cast upon his 



504 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1839. 



Brougham 

assists 
Lyndhurst 
in the Re- 
view of the 
Session. 



party. But Brougham opposed it as a *' Whig job," and 
vowed that he never would let it pass without a clause dis- 
qualifying the Judge of the Court of Admiralty from sitting 
in Parliament. This could not be agreed to by its sup- 
porters, — partly from considerations personal to Lushington, 
and, further, from a sincere belief that the respectability and 
usefulness of the House of Commons would be materially 
damaged by excluding from it those whose judicial duties do 
not clash with the duties of a representative of the people, 
and who may be of great service in the deliberations of the 
Legislature from their knowledge of constitutional and inter- 
national law. 

Brougham, in answer to Melbourne, made a speech of 
enormous length against the Whig Government, which, on 
some points, he assailed with considerable success ; but he 
was sorely puzzled when he came to his defence on the 
charge of throwing out the Admiralty Court Reform Bill ; and, 
after some vague compliments to the learning and integrity of 
Lushington, he condescended to insinuate that the Judge 
prostituted his judicial character by actively engaging in 
political strife — " which no Judge ought to have the oppor- 
tunity of doing " — although he himself was still acting as a 
Judge in the morning by hearing appeals, and in the evening- 
was the zealous leader of a faction.* His new and most 
telling topic was the conduct of the Government in permit- 
ting, for the purpose of pleasing the Radicals, the '"' Ballot " 
to be an open question. Now that he was a leader of Tories, 
he rather wished to Avash off the Radical taint which he 
had contracted while coquetting with the Radicals. He had 
taunted the Government with their supposed doctrine of 
finality, and he now charged them with endangering our 
institutions by tampering with the Reform Bill, while he 
i-epresented at the same time that they were hollow in their 
Liberal professions, and only wished to deceive. 

" The reason for making this an open question," said he, 



* There is nothing more strange about Brougham than his seeming 
forgetfulness in debate of tlie answer which he might be aware is sug- 
gesting itself to the mind of all who hear him, both us to his facts and his 
reasonings. 



VI. 



A.D. 1839. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAl^:. 505 

"was to hug it to death, to stifle and extingiiisli it. If it was CHAP. 
made an open question, it might be less likel}^ to be carried than 
if it continued a close question; it might be made open in order 
to be straugled. For all these omissions and misdeeds of the 
Government is it wonderful that Eeformers should be hostile — 
even rancorously hostile, in the exact proportion in which 
Eeformers are heartily and sincerely attached to the cause of 
Eeform ? 

' "Whigs are deceivers ever, 

• One foot on sea and one on shore, 

To one thing constant never.' 

But you now hear added what was never added before : 

' Sigh not so. 
But let them go.' " * 

In spite of these invectives, Melbourne was able again to 27th Aug. 
prorogue Parliament, still continuing Minister, and still 
basking in the sunshine of royal favour. After the p»roroga- 
tion he proceeded to Windsor Castle, while Brougham was 
obliged to return, disappointed and forlorn, to his house in 
Westmorland. He had renounced his Whig connections, 
and although in public he was closely associated with the 
Tories, he had as yet little private intercourse with them. 

On Monday, the 21st of October, while Brougham was Report of 
at Brougham Hall, London was thrown into a state of ^j^Th! '^"^ 
great excitement and consternation by a report of his 
death. The fact, at first disbelieved, soon gained universal 
credit, from a letter purporting to have been written to his 
friend Mr. Alfred Montgomery, by his friend IMr. Shafto, who 
was on a visit at Brougham Hall, and who professed to have 
been an eye-witness of the melancholy catastrophe. Such a 
letter undoubtedly was received by Mr, Montgomery, and, 
being entrusted to Count D'Orsay, was read by him at a 
ftxshionable club in St. James's Street, as containing true 
intelligence. In a few minutes it was spread over the wide 
metropolis. 

All the morning papers of Tuesday, the 22nd of October, 
except *The Times,' contained leading articles on the 
" sudden death of Lord Brougham," with biographical 
sketches of him, and comments upon his career and character. 

♦ 50 Hansard, 496-543. 



506 REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, As a specimen of tlie laudatory, I copy tliat from the 
^^- ^ Morning Chronicle ' : — • 

A.D. 1839. " Death of Lord Brougham. 

"It is with sincere and strong regret that we announce the 
death of Lord Brougham. So far as the particulars have jet 
transpired of this unexpected and melancholy event, they are 
derived from a letter from Mr. Shafto, which we are informed 
was read yesterday at one of the club-houses. It appears that 
Lord Brougham, with his guests, Mr. Leader and Mr. Shafto, 
left Brougham Hall on Saturday, for the purpose of visiting 
some ruin in the neighbourhood ; that the axletree of the carriage 
broke, the horses became unmanageable, the whole party was 
thrown out, and after his Lordship had received a severe wound 
by a kick from one of the horses, the wheel passed over his head, 
killing him on the spot. Mr. Leader it is said was severely 
bruised, but Mr. Shafto escaped without material injury. Such 
is the account generally circulated last night. We have seen a 
frank of Lord Brougham's dated on Sunday, and should have 
taken it as evidence, notwithstanding the frequency with which 
Sunday franks in particular are predated, of the falsehood of 
the report, but for the distinct and circumstantial statement to 
which we have referred. Of the event itself there is, we fear, 
no reason to doubt. 

" It has been our duty of late to comment with some severity, 
though not more, we think, than the occasion demanded, on his 
Lordship's last publication, and on the course of political action 
which it seemed to forebode. Whatever expectation or appre- 
hension it might suggest is now stilled for ever ; and the feelings 
excited by that work are merged in those which embrace his 
whole life, character, and political career. 

" In variety of attainment, facility of expression, energy of 
purpose ; in the grandeur of forensic eloquence ; in the declama- 
tion that makes a debater impressive to his audience, and the 
sarcasm that renders him most formidable to an opponent ; in 
the untiring continuance of intellectual labour ; in the fervent 
championship of many great objects of national philanthropy 
and improvement ; and in that familiar personal acquaintance so 
important to the practical statesman with the modes of thought 
and feeling that obtain through all the difierent gradations of 
society — Lord Brougham stood pre-eminent amongst all his poli- 
tical compeers. He well earned, by long toil, splendid eftbrt, 
and gradual ascent, the elevation to which he attained ; not that 
merely of rank and station, but of celebrity and influence. Even 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 507 

before he achieved, and after he was divested of office, no man CHAP. 

more snrely fixed upon himself the attention of England and 

of Europe — of the old world and the new ; and now while ,039 

' Th.e extravagant and erring spirit hies 
To Ms confine — ' 

there, we devoutly hope, to repose in the bosom of his Father 
and his God, we feel rising upon us the recollections of many 
an arduous and vigorous struggle for the right, for unrestricted 
commerce, for the spread of knowledge, for legal and representative 
leforms, for the suffering and enslaved African, for freedom, 
civil and religious, for many a political victim marked for sacri- 
fice, for a persecuted Queen, and for the poor and ignorant — the 
injured and hopeless — in our own land and all the world over. 
Such recollections, in spite of all deductions and exceptions, 
which sink into disregard now that the great account is closed, 
will endear and enshrine his memory. The Legislature, the 
country at large, all parties, sects, classes, must feel that a great 
public loss has been sustained. And in the future annals of our 
eventful times, conspicuous and illustrious, will stand the name 
of Henr}' Lord Brougham." 

But the tone of most of the other journals was very hostile, 
although they professed a wish to be guided by the maxim 
" De mortuis nil nisi bonum." 

The ' Times ' remained silent on the subject till Thursday, 
the 24th October, when there came out the following " sting- 
ing " article, written by Mr. Barnes, the then Editor, who had 
been exceedingly intimate with Brougham, and had long 
been one of his warmest admirers and eulogists, but who had 
quarrelled with him in the beginning of the year 1834, and 
had subsequently become his most formidable, because most 
discriminating, assailant : — 

*' The intelligence of Lord Brougham's death, believed so 
generally and with so much confidence thioughout the whole of 
Monday last, and on authority believed to be so unquestionable, 
owed no part of its circulation to this journal, the only one 
among the morning newspapers of Tuesday by which the 
disastrous incident was not assumed for fact, and made the occa- 
sion of some sort of obituary article. 

" To expatiate at length upon such topics would require 
an exercise of pen or speech almost as cumbrous as his Lord- 
ship's own productions, lie has been for a period equal to 



508 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP, that of an entire 2!:eneration tlie most voluminous of writers, 
VI 

the most voluble of debaters, and of actors, if not the most 

A D 1839 efficient and successful, at any rate the most restless and inde- 
fatigable. 

"Had he abstained from writing, speaking, and attempting 
nine-tenths of that with which he has loaded the name of 
Brougham, he might have accomplished in each department 
whereon his multifarious efforts were in a great measure wasted, 
a success as signal as his failures have been notorious and 
memorable, and have enrobed himself with a graceful and flow- 
ing reputation, not one composed of shreds and patches, here 
exposing his nakedness, and there oppressing him with a grievous 
and unwholesome weight. 

" There is scarcely a subject on which Lord Brougham has not 
put himself forward as the author of one or more publications — • 
history, theolog}^, metaphysics, mathematics, political economy, 
literary criticism, biographical criticism, constitutional disserta- 
tion, party controversy without end. 

' Omue fere scribendi genus tetigit.' 

Alas ! we are unable to add, ' nullum quod tetigit non ornamt' 
In fact, there is no one general topic discussed by Lord Brougham 
with regard to which he has contributed either substance or 
beauty to the thoughts which preceding writers had expended 

on it To him the creative is not given. He 

is an advocate, and nothing more ; an advocate who gains 
attention without inspiring any deep or enduring interest; 
an advocate who entertains his audience, who strives to cut 
away objections or obstructions by the edge of sarcasm, not 
by the power of reason ; an advocate who can be vehement, but 
never earnest, who exhibits heat of temper, but not of passion, 
and could as rarely win the sympathy of jurors as he could the 
sober sanction of the judge. . . . 

*' In society, as one of the most agreeable, amusing, kindly, and 
convivial of associates, there is no individual capable of filling 
the space which would have been left void by Lord Brougham's 
untimely exit. There are a multitude of friends who loved him 
for what he was and is, as there are of observers who have 
admired him for what he might have been. But solid post in 
the great political world he has none ; followers, he has none ; 
reasonable prospects of influence or power, or gratified ambition, 
he has none. There is no party, whether 'Movement' or 'Con- 
sei'vative,' that would ventui-e to employ him otherwise than as a 
transient ally ; — as a partner or a colleague, never. Setting aside 



A.D. 1839. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 509 

all affectionate or private feelings, those members of botii parties CHAP, 
who are best acquainted with Lord Brougham, and have tried 
him, would, after a little while, have felt his removal a lightening 
of many cares, and a release from many imminent embarrass- 
ments. For it is by impulses of temper or of pique, more of a 
selfish than even a capricious nature, and abstracted from all 
broad or distinct considerations of national or general good, that 
the course of this impetuous, and, in some respects, formidable 
adventurer, on the scenes of public life, has hitherto been shaped 
and directed." 

This article, altliough undoubtedly malignant and over- 
charged in its censure, contains much truth, and displays 
a very familiar acquaintance with the failings and blunders of 
Brougham. 

The vituperative article next for ability of execution ap- 
peared in the ' Examiner,' from the pen of Mr. Fonblanque, 
who likewise once had been a worshipper of the great idol of 
the Press, and w^as now disposed to join in demolishing its 
fragments. He directly charged (what many began to sus- 
pect) that Brougham himself was the author of the report, in Brougham 
the hope of enjoying during life the pleasure of perusing 
posthumous praise. 

Thus was the article headed :* — 

" The Brougham Hoax. 
' And is old Double dead ? ' — Master Shallow. 

' She went to the undertaker 

To buy him a cotfin, 
And when she came back 

The dog was laughing.' — Mother Huhhard." 

The writer went on to observe that, while the report was 
believed, the general feeling was that we could better have 
spared a letter man, and he mixed a little praise, to give 
greater pungency to his satire ; but he concluded with up- 
braiding the supposed defunct with having been privy to 
Mr. Shafto's letter, and having committed the crime of 
suicide. No direct evidence of complicity was adduced, 
except that Brougham, by his own confession, wrote on the 
Sunday to his family in London not to be alarmed if they 

♦ 'Examiner,' Sunday, October 27, 1839. 



suspected 
of suicide. 



510 EEIGN OF QUEEN YIGTOEIA. 

CHAP, should hear a foolish rumour of his being killed by an 
accident. 



A.D. 1839. This was by no means conclusive ; for an accident there 
had been on the Saturday, when Brougham, with Mr. Shafto 
and another friend, had been overturned in a carriage while 
taking a drive in Westmorland, and were exposed to real 
danger, although they escaped unhurt. Nevertheless the 
world believed, and to this day generally believes, that when 
the three companions got back to Brougham Hall, and talked 
of their narrow escape, and the sensation which would have 
been created if the illustrious ex-Chancellor really had come 
to his end by the kick of a horse (like Philip of Macedon, 
killed by the falling of a tile), they did agree, by way of a frolic, 
that Shafto should write a letter to Alfred Montgomery cir- 
cumstantially describing the event — Brougham sanguinely 
believing that it would revive public sympathy in his favour, 
and that the contributors to the Press would embrace the 
opportunity to make atonement for the abuse which they had 
recently lavished upon him. Although Mr. Shafto denied 
having written the letter, no explanation of it was ever given, 
and it did contain a true statement of some particulars of the 
accident which could only have been known to those who 
witnessed it. People, therefore, assumed that Mr. Shafto 
wrote the letter, and the question was asked, "Would Mr. 
• Shafto, while under the roof of Lord Brougham as his guest, 

have written the letter to Lord Brougham's bosom friend, 
Mr. Alfred Montgomery, without the knowledge of Lord 
Brougham ? " 

Whether Brougham was cognisant of this piece of bad plea- 
santry or not, he was much annoyed by the result of it. Not 
only was he mortified by the great preponderance of abuse 
which it called forth, but he discovered, to his great surprise, 
that he was generally suspected to be tlie author of it, and 
he knew the ridicule which he must have incurred by killing 
himself, and reading so many and such unfavourable cha- 
racters of himself, written when he was supposed to have gone 
to a better world. 

No ordinary man who had got into such a scrape could 
have rallied and reappeared in society. But by the time that 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 511 

another session began Brougham was again ujmn Ms legs CHAP. 
as if nothing had happened. If he received a few malicious ' 



mamasce. 



congratulations on his wonderful recovery from the effects of a.d. 1840. 
his accident, most men and women, from Liking him or being- 
afraid of him, refrained from alluding to the subject, or 
strongly censured the bad joke which some enemy had prac- 
tised upon him. 

The Queen in her opening speech having announced her I6th Jan. 
intention to ally herself in marriage with the Prince Albert Announce- 
of Saxe Coburg and Gotha, Brougham showed his ill humour Queen's 
by expressing 

"an earnest hope that the country might not on this, as on 
former similar occasions, be doomed to see an indecent and un- 
feeling race run between conflicting parties at the expense of the 
interests of a suffering people, for the purpose of pajnng court in 
the highest quarters." 

Alluding to the riotous proceedings of the Chartists, he 
continued : — 

" With a people full of discontent, and af&icted with distresses 
such as we know they are now suffering under, with falling 
wages, rising prices, and diminished profits, — with the country in 
such a state, to propose any provision beyond what is required by 
the absolute necessity of the case, would, in my deliberate and 
conscientious opinion, be a breach of all the duties which either 
the Government or the Parliament owes to the people. I should 
revert to the words of one of the wisest of men — I mean Lord Bacon 
— who, dealing with a matter of the same kind, said : ' Beware if 
you have to probe popular discontents, and find that they are 
deep-seated and wide-spreading, beware how you drive back the 
humours, for they will then only cause the wound to bleed 
inwards.' " * 

But Brougham cannot be justly accused at any stage of his 
varied career of deliberately resorting to the arts of a dema- 
gogue ; he always meant to respect property, law, and order, 
and lie could not on this occasion have sought to seduce the 
Chartists from their idol, Feargus O'Connor, wlio told them 
that they were not only entitled to the five points of the 
Charter, but to an equal division among themselves of the land, 

* 51 Hansard, 22, 



512 



KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1840. 



Privilege 
question on 
light of 
Houses of 
Parliament 
to autho- 
rise publi- 
cation of 
crimina- 
tory matter. 



Part 
taken l>y 
Broufrham. 



and all its produce. I cannot pay a similar compliment to 
all the Tories. The conduct of the Duke of Wellington. and 
Sir Eobert Peel in this respect was unexceptionable, but 'the 
subordinate members of the party were always willing to 
coalesce with the Chartists. If there was to be a public 
meeting to petition against the Corn Laws, they encouraged 
the Chartists to break it up by violence, or to join with them 
in denouncing the conspiracy of the Whigs against native 
industry. They went so far as to express deep sympathy 
with Frost and the Welsh insurgents, who had been convicted 
of high treason ; they represented the Whig Poor-Law Reform 
as a violation of the inherent rights of the lower orders to be 
maintained at the public expense ; and at parliamentary 
elections they often rejoiced in starting a Chartist candidate 
who, although he had no chance of being returned, might 
abuse the Whigs and divide the Liberal interest. 

During the Session of 1840 tl^ere was no ministerial crisis. 
Both Brougham and Lyndhurst became milder in their oppo- 
sition, — perhaps thinking that ministers were gTadually get- 
ting into insuperable difficulties from the decrease of the 
revenue, in spite of additional taxation, and that the wiser 
course was quietly to ''bide their time." Another reason was 
that Peel, — who now had almost unlimited sway in the House 
of Commons, and without whom a new Conservative Govern- 
ment could not be formed, — on one very important question 
which now agitated the public mind, had quarrelled with the 
great majority of the Conservative party. 

This question, which had nearly brought about a civil war, 
was whether those who, acting under the authority of the 
House of Commons, had printed and published papers con- 
taining criminatory charges against individuals, were liable to 
be proceeded against by action for libel in the courts of law. 
Lord Melbourne's Government, by my advice as Attorney 
General, adopted the opinion that the right of ordering such 
publications for the information of members of the legislature 
and of the public was necessary to enable tlie two Houses of 
Parliament to perform their functions, and that to bring such 
an action was a breacli of parliamentary privilege. Brougham 
most passionately took the other side, partly to spite the 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 513 

Government, partly to spite the Attorney General, who was CHAP, 
much mixed up in the controversy — but, above all, to spite ' 

the House of Commons, an assembly to which he had un- a.d. 1840. 
accountably conceived a very strong antipathy. From the 
time when he vacated his seat in it by accepting the Great 
Seal he had never been present at any of its deliberations, or 
for a moment visited the scene of his former glory ; and from 
the time of his leaving the Government and going into 
Opposition he had systematically caught with eagerness at 
every opportunity to sneer at, to ridicule, and to censure its 
proceedings. When a Committee of the House of Commons 
had almost unanimously presented a report which was adopted 
by the House, insisting upon this right of printing and pub- 
lishing, he contended in pamphlets and in spoken speeches, 
and in prefaces to printed speeches, that the Commons might 
as well insist upon a right to order their servants to rob 
upon the highway. So eager was he, that, when the question 
came on to be argued in court before the judges, he placed 
himseK on the bench, and several times interrupted the 
counsel for the House of Commons who, nevertheless, took 
occasion in his presence to complain of the manner in which 
a Peer of Parliament w^io might have to sit judicially on the 
question upon appeal, instead of waiting to hear it argued, 
had as a mere amateur prejudged it, without having heard 
any argument at all. 

The great bulk of the Conservative party in both Houses 
strongly took part against " privilege," but Sir Kobert Peel 
gallantly and resolutely was its champion. Things had 
come to this pass that the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex 
were imprisoned by the House of Commons for levying 
damages in obedience to a writ of the Queen's Bench, and 
the judges of that court had admitted that they had no 
jurisdiction to gi-ant relief, as the Si)eaker's warrant of com- 
mitment merely stated that it was for a breach of tlie 
privileges of the House of Commons without specifying 
in what the breacli of privilege consisted. Brougham pre- 
sented a petition from the Sheriffs to the House of Lords 
describing their pitiable condition, but the House of Lords 
could grant no relief more than the Court of Quijen's Bench. 

VOL. VIII. 2 L 



514 



EEIGN OF QUEEN YICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1840. 



Dispute 
settled by a 
bill esta- 
blishing the 
disputed 
right. 



Brougham' 
chateau in 
France. 



The progress of business in Parliament was entirely sus- 
pended ; motions were talked of to commit Lord Denman 
and the judges of the Queen's Bench to the Tower, and many 
who thought that the House of Commons was usurping all 
the powers of the State meditated petitions to the Queen 
that she would assist the courts by a military force to 
administer justice and to enforce their decrees. 

Had it not been for the desire to reunite Peel to the 
Conservative party, the confusion would have thickened, and 
no one can tell what consequences might have followed ; but 
Lyndhurst perceived that while the existing state of affairs 
continued he had no chance of recovering the Great Seal, 
and he consented to resort to legislation — offering that the 
principle for which the Commons struggled should be con- 
ceded, and that an Act should be passed giving power effec- 
tually to assert it. This was very distasteful to Brougham, 
but, as it would hasten the downfall of the Melbourne 
Government, he agreed to it. We were thus in reality to 
gain all we had been fighting for, and we could not refuse 
the offer. So a bill, applying to both Houses, was prepared, 
which declared that the disputed power was indispensably 
necessary, and which effectually prevented any action being 
prosecuted for any such publication. This bill passed both 
Houses and received the Eoyal Assent. Although it in 
reality gave a triumph to the Whigs, Brougham would not 
oppose it as he believed it would hasten their downfall. The 
swelling waves instantly became smooth, and the liberated 
Sheriffs at a City feast amicably related their sufferings to 
those who had planned their imprisonment. Brougham was 
much mortified at seeing an end put to this " pretty quarrel," 
and he was not able to raise up any new cause of embarrass- 
ment to the Government for the rest of the session. 

Finding the climate of Westmorland rather moist, he 
about this time bought a small estate near Cannes, in Pro- 
vence, and built a commodious house upon it which he called 
Chateau Eleanor Louise in compliment to his beloved 
daughter. Here he has since spent several months in every 
year — his habit being at the prorogation of Parliament to 
retire to Brougham Hall, to remain there exercising liberal 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 515 

hospitality till the approach of winter — then to repair to ^^^^* 
Paris, where he spends eight or ten days attending the 



meetings of the Institute and paying his respects to the a.d. 1840. 
rulers of France for the time being, Koyal, Republican, or 
Imperial, and then proceeding to his chateau by Lyons, 
Avignon, and the Estrelles. Here he remains till another 
session of Parliament is about to commence — engaged in 
study, and much pleased to entertain his friends who are 
passing by this route between France and Italy. He is 
exceedingly popular with his neighbours, the inhabitants of 
Cannes, not only by reason of the personal kindness and 
affability with which he treats all classes, but by his having 
obtained through his influence with King Louis Philippe a 
large subvention from the French Government for the im- 
provement of their harbour. 

In the beginning of January, 1841, he was summoned to Session of 
London by Lyndhurst with an intimation that the Melbourne 
Government was becoming more and more unpopular, and an 
assurance that it could not possibly last another session. 
With alacrity he repaired to his old post in the House of 
Lords on the ministerial side, from which he could most 
effectually assail his old friends by a flank fire. The Queen's 
Speech was purposely framed so as to provoke no amendment 
or opposition, and when the mover and seconder of the 
address had finished their stereotyped orations there was a 
general disposition among the peers at once to agree to it as 
a matter of course, reserving any attack upon the Govern- 
ment to a more fitting opportunity. But Lord Brougham 
sprang up, and at great length censured the policy and the 
acts of the Government both at home and abroad. He had 
most success in giving vent to the feelings which have always 
most creditably disposed him to cultivate a good under- 
standing between France and England — an object wliicli, 
from his alternate residence in the two countries and his 
familiar acquaintance with the disposition of the two nations, 
he has been essentially instrumental in promoting. Com- 
menting on the great Syrian question which had brought us 
to the brink of hostilities, he now said, — 

" There is no denying that the French are a people of the 

2 L 2 



A.D. 1841. 



516 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP, greatest genius, courage, and military skill. Their brilliant 
military cliaracter makes them 'jealous of honour, sudden and 
quick in quarrel ; ' and on these accounts it would have been 
better if everything like discourtesy, w^hich was calculated to 
induce them to a course likely to gratify their predilections, had 
been studiously avoided. To suppose, however, for a moment 
that any one in this country ever underrated the great military 
character and renown of the French nation— to suppose that even 
the noble Duke opposite, or any of his former gallant companions 
in arms ever thought or dreamt of speaking otherwise than most 
respectfully of the great achievements in arms of that nation — 
would be in the highest degree preposterous." 

Lord Melbourne, in answer, observed that — 

" noble Lords, when they studied the whole course of the negotia- 
tions, would be persuaded that there had been no want of courtesy 
on our part, and that we had been guilty of nothing which could 
justly offend the most sensitive mind. But it would not do for 
one nation to plead its own irritability as a reason for seeking to 
govern the conduct of another nation. This would be like what 
often occurs in private life, where you see that the most ill- 
tempered member of the family in effect governs the whole 
household by means of constantly saying, ' Oh, I am very irritable, 
I am very ill-humoured, don't make me angry.' " 

Hostilities now ceased in the Upper House, for here the 
Conservative cause had completely triumphed. After re- 
peated divisions, indicating a want of confidence in her 
Majesty's present ministers, it was not worth while to bring 
forward new motions to proclaim the same fact. Brougham 
could not be silent ; but for the rest of the session he con- 
tented himself with occasional anti-Whig sarcasms as he 
discussed Bribery at elections, Cliaritable trusts, Chartists, 
Church rates, Church of Scotland, Copyhold enfranchisement, 
Corn laws,* Criminal justice. Delay of justice. Petty sessions, 

* He made many speeches on this snbject in presenting petitions for imme- 
diate abolition. He had become a convert to free trade in corn, and such was 
his zeal, that he forgot he had ever been a Protectionist. Having taunted 
Alexander Baring, Lord Ashburlon, who from being a Free-trader had become 
a Protectionist, with inconsistency, he was told that the taunt came with 
a very bad grace from him who had become a Free-trader from being a 
Protectionist. He, as usual on all such occasions, denied the charge, and 
asserted his steady and uniform consistency on this as on all other questions. 
But to show his lapse of memory, it is only necessary to refer to his speech as 
copied in this Memoir. — Ante, p. 338. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 517 

Privy council, Punishment of death, Eepeal of union, CHAP. 
Socialism, Taxation, Universities, and the Welsh language.* ' 



want ot con- 
fidence ear- 



In the Lo^yer House the death struggle was now going on, a.d. i841 
and the ministerial majorities which had been considerably Vote of 
increased after the crisis on the Jamaica Bill, were now 
slowly but steadily dwindling away. At last came Sir ""ed against 
Robert Peel's decisive motion *•' that her Majesty's Ministers ment in the 
do not sufBciently possess the confidence of the House of co^^i^o,^s 
Commons to enable them to carry through the House 
measures which they deem of essential importance to the 4th June. 
public welfare ; and that their continuance in office is at 
variance Avith the spirit of the constitution" — which, after a 
debate of five days, was carried by a majority of one. 

The natural consequence would have been an imme- 
diate change of Government, but the usual announcement to 
this effect did not take j)lace, and was not expected, for 
ministers had intimated their intention in case of a defeat to Dissolution 
dissolve Parliament and to appeal to the country. The ^J^r ''" 
Queen still retained her attachment to Lord Melbourne and 
her dislike of Sir Eobert Peel, and it was hoped that the 
free trade budget which had been launched would be so 
popular as to secure a majority in the House of Commons. 

The new Parliament did abolish the Corn Laws, but, alas ! Return of 
not till after the expulsion of the Whigs. The election tive majo- 
returns showed a decided majority for " Protection," which ^'^^'^^ 
was the Conservative cry at the hustings. The famine 
which followed first gave an ascendancy to free trade. Till 
then it was not only odious to Tories or Conservatives, but to 
the great bulk of the Whig aristocracy. A number of Whig 
county members who had abandoned protection now lost 
their seats, and other Whig county members, to retain their 
seats, adhered to protection and abandoned the Wliig 
Government. 

Lord ^lelbourne went through the form of preparing a 
speech to be delivered by the Queen recommending Parlia- 
ment to consider " whether the laws regulating the trade in 
corn did not aggravate the natural fluctuations of supply, 

* Index to Hansard. 



518 



KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VI. 



A.D. 1841. 



Brougham 
refuses to 
rejoin the 
Whigs, and 
to "let 
bygones be 
bygones." 



Brougliam 
tramples 
on the 
dead body 
of Mel- 
bourne. 



embarrass trade, derange currency, and by their operation 
diminish the comfort and increase the privations of the great 
body of the community " — but he and all his followers well 
knew that their doom was inevitable. 

It seemed to some friends of Brougham that this was a 
favourable opportunity for reuniting him to the Whig party. 
The certain anticipation was that Peel must be minister, and 
it was considered equally certain that '' Protection " must be 
the basis of his Government, for it was from the belief of his 
beiiig a determined " Protectionist " that he had obtained a 
majority. Therefore Brougham, the leader of the free trade 
faction in the House of Lords, could not accept, and could 
not be offered, office under such a premier. His attachment 
to this doctrine would be a good excuse for his returning to 
the Whigs, who staked their existence upon it. If he had 
been ill used by them he had enjoyed his revenge — they 
were ready to embrace him — and both parties should say 
" Let bygones be bygones." 

But he was more obdurate and implacable than the son of 
Peleus. He exulted in contemplating the inevitable destruc- 
tion of former associates, and he was determined to indulge 
in the savage pleasure of trampling upon their dead bodies. 

In the debate upon the address. Brougham's revenge 
must have been satiated, unless it was insatiable. Mel- 
bourne might have been expected to be roused by the 
occasion. He might with good effect have taken a review of 
his administration of seven years, and shewn how, amidst 
many difficulties, he had kept the country in peace — ^had 
passed many good measures notwithstanding a more factious 
opposition in the House of Lords than any English muiister 
ever encountered — and that he was now to be crushed for 
supporting the policy of free trade which his opponents 
would soon be obliged to adopt. But feeling that all hope 
was gone, he would not even take the trouble to die decently . 
His speech was the most perfunctory, jejune, and wretched 
performance I ever witnessed. Brougham seemed to com- 
passionate him for a moment, but rekindled his ire by 
reflecting how he liad been wantonly thrown aside in 1835, 
and had been induced to work as the serf of his betrayers 



LIFE OF LOED BEOL'GHAM. 519 

for a whole session under the false pretence that time was CHAP, 
required to get oyer the King's prejudices against him. He ' 



commented in severe terms on the feeble effort now made by a.u. i841. 
the moribund miuister, which seemed to indicate that Jupiter 
had already deprived him of his understanding. He still 
eulogized free trade policy, but argued that it never could 
have been carried by men who had only suddenly resorted to 
it as a desperate experiment to keep themselves in power. 
He denied that the result of the elections afforded any proof 
of the people being against free trade ; they condemned the 
minister, not the measure. He bitterly censured Melbourne 
for dissolving Parliament when he might have known that 
an appeal to the people would only make him more helpless, 
and for meeting Parliament, instead of resigning, after the 
result of the elections was kno^vn — so that he made the 
Queen (for whose dignity he affected to be so solicitous) 
recommend from the throne measures which he knew that 
both Houses would reject. He hoped that the new ministers 
would sincerely adopt the great measure of free trade, which 
had been retarded by the frauds of its pretended friends, and 
thus only could the country reap the inestimable advantages 
which it was calculated to bestow. 

No answer was given or attempted to this speech, and at 24th Aug. 
the conclusion of it the House dividing, the contents were 
96, the not-contents 1G8 ; majority against the Whig Govern- 
ment 72. 

The Commons having after a debate of four days come to 27th Aug. 
a similar vote by a majority of 91, Lord Melbourne made 
the usual announcement that ministers had resigned and 
only held their offices till their successors were appointed. 

Sir Piobert Peel soon constructed his Government, which sh- R. Peel 
Y.as supposed to secure the perpetual triumph of " Protcc- ^'"'"^^ ^''' 
tion," but which for ever established " Free Trade." 



520 



KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAPTER VIL 

FEOM THE RESIGNATION OF LORD MELBOURNE TO THE 
RESIGNATION OF SIR ROBERT PEEL. 



CHAP. 
VII. 



A.D. 1841. 

Brougham, 
professing to 
be '•' in the 
front of the 
Opposi- 
tion," is 
Advocate 
General of 
the new 
Govern- 
ment. 



1841—1846. 

At tlie next meeting of the House of Lords the two 2:reat 
parties changed sides, the Conservatives (now ministerialists) 
sitting on the right of the throne, and the Liberals (now 
oppositionists) on the left. To the surprise of most men 
Brougham crossed the house along with his old Whig asso- 
ciates, drawn up in line against those whom he had warmly 
supported, and had resolved warmly to support. This course 
I think was very wrong, as not only being contrary to par- 
liamentary and party practice and etiquette, but as being 
actually disingenuous and unfair. In figurative phrase, he 
was about to fight under false colours, and although I acquit 
him of all wish ever to overhear the conversation of those 
whom he meant to attack, I can testify that he sometimes 
prevented a free communication between them when they 
were considering how they should defend themselves against 
his assaults ; the continued tone of familiarity and good- 
fellowship which was kept up between him and us only 
rendered his presence the more embarrassing. He still felt 
the same rankling resentment against the Whigs, and he was 
as eager to disparage and to damage them when reduced to 
seemingly hopeless opposition, as, in their palmy days, when 
they could do what they pleased. I have reason to believe 
that, althougli no offer of office was made to Brougham in 
the late crisis, he was told, by way of lure, that Peel, who 
in his heart was for free trade, entertained a high respect for 
him ; tliat if the Great Seal became vacant he might be asked 
to accept it, and that Lyndhurst, idle and unwilling to resume 
labour at his advanced age, and moreover disliking Peel, 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 521 , 

\ 

would probably soon resign. Whatever his motives migbt CHAP, 
be, as bis intention undoubtedly ^yas zealously to aid the ' 

existing Government, he certainly ought to have seated him- a.d. 1841. 
self behind the ministers, thrusting his knees into their backs 
as he openly and boldly did when a commoner in the time of 
Canning ; or to have taken his place on the ministerial side 
below the gangway ; or to have joined the discontented and 
professedly neutral squad on the cross benches. But, while 
lie was in truth the chief protector of the Government, he 
ostentatiously represented himself as having the inclinations 
as well as the local station of a leader of Opposition. Thus, 
while speaking from his appropriated place on the left of 
Lord Melbourne, after commenting on the gross and universal 
bribery said to have prevailed at the late elections, and 
classing the different parties accused, he observed : — 

" The first charge is brought against men who support the 
views of the present Government — at that time in opposition — 
and over against whom I have now the honour to stand. The 
second case is brought as a charge against men who supported 
the late Government — now the Opposition, as it is called — in the 
front of ivhich 1 h3iYG now the honour to take my place. [Hear, 
hear, and a laugh, from Lord Melbourne.^ My noble friend, the 
noble Viscount lately at the head of the Government, laughs- 
I am at a loss to know what my noble friend meant by the 
inteiTuption. Was my noble friend annoyed at the term oj)])o- 
sition ? " 

Lord ^lelbourne, who was no doubt amused, like others, by 
the false position of the noble and learned ex-Chaiicellor, 
could not regularly complain of the place 'from which the 
noble and learned ex-ChaDcellor spoke, as the standing orders 
only required all Dukes to sit and speak from the Dukes' 
bench, and so of the different grades of the peerage down to 
Barons, without mentioning the modern terms of ministerial 
and oj^positiori sides, which would have astonished our pre- 
decebsors in the reign of Edward I., although the House of 
Lords was then arranged as to throne, woolsack, and side 
benches and cross benches exactly as we now see it. The j 

ex-Premier therefore contented himself with affecting to bo 
shocked at the idea of the ex-Chancellor or any peer coming 



522 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
VII. 



A.D. 1841. 



Brougham's 
reception of 
Lord Canip- 
bell ill the 
House of 
Lords. 



Brougham 
contented 
and happy. 



into the House with the premeditated resolution of opposing 
any measure proposed by the ministers of the Crown, 

"I remember," said he, "when I was a member of the other 
House, that aUuding to a member as one of the Opposition was 
considered irregular, and the Speaker solemnly pronounced it to 
be unparliamentary language to say of any member that he had 
come into the House pledged to oppose the Government ; and 
what he would have said of a member who declared that he tooh 
his place in the front of the Opposition, the Lord only knows ! " * 

Brougham was much annoyed by my coming into the 
House of Lords, foreseeing that I should be a sore check upon 
him when laying down bad law during the debate ; but in 
private we kept up our usual free raillery — even after we 
w^ere engaged in very sharp personal encounters in public. 
When we first met in the House beheld out his finger for me 
to shake, and exclaimed, while he made a low bow, " How do 
you do, my Lord? Jack no longer." I asked him not 
to remind me of my misfortunes. Brougham. — " Well, there 
is one consolation for you here ; that you may speak w hen 
you please, and as often as you please, and on what subjects 
you please, and you may say what you please." Campbell. — 
" I suppose you expound the rules of the House fi'om your 
own practice, but this will only suit you. None hut yourself 
can he your parallel ! " 

Brougham w-as now in exuberant spirits, and seemed to 
delight in the cherished conviction that the Whigs w^ere for 
ever prostrate. To accomplish this object he was ready to 
submit to any sacrifice, and he really seemed careless about 
office for himself He ascribed the victory which had been 
won mainly to his own efforts, and till the freshness of the 
rapture he experienced had passed away, he confessed that he 
was sufficiently rewarded by the glory he had acquired. 
Wonderful to relate, he did not at all feel the awkwardness 
of his own position as the champion of a party which he pro- 
fessed to oppose. How deeply is it to be regretted that he 
did not now retire from party warfare, and, acting with real 
independence, devote himself to national education, the 
suppression of slavery, the improved administration of chari- 



* 59 Hansaivl, 1007. 



LIFE OF LORD BPvOUGHAM. 523 

ties, and law reform. A party might Lave formed round CHAP, 
him and forced h'im into power. At all events the remainder 



of his career would have been straightforward and easy, and ^,d. 1841. 
would have commanded the respect of mankind. If he could 
have had a prophetic glance at the difficulties, embarrass- 
ments, mortifications and obloquy to be encountered in the 
course which he was about to adopt, he surely would have 
shrunk from it with horror. 

Sir Eobert Peel, being duly installed, proposed no measures 
to Parliament, most peremptorily refused to give the slightest 
intimation what his policy was to be, and very speedily put 
an end to the session, so that Brougham, professing to be in ''^'^ <^ct. 
"the front of the Opposition," but eager to show his unmi- 
tigated enmity to the members of the fallen Government, was 
dismissed for a while from parliamentary warfare, in which 
he always much delighted, to the stillness of private life, 
which sometimes made him pine for excitement. 

In the month of December he found relief in the Judicial Brougham 
Committee of the Privy Council — a very useful tribunal diciaiV'om- 
which he had founded, and which, as yet, he continued very '"i^^*^^ ^^ 

' ' J ' J the Piivy 

assiduously to attend. I myself, ex-Chancellor of Ireland, Council. 
was now a member of it, and I found him a very agreeable 
colleague. He used to talk of this tribunal in the House 
of Lords and elsewhere as his court, and represented all 
the cases that came before it as decided by his own 
sole authority. But in truth we were all equal, and he 
was not even primus inter jpares, although he would repre- 
sent himself as the chief or president, and the other 
members as his puisnes or puppets. But when we were 
sitting together he was very unassuming and docile. He 
delivered judgment in his turn — never shirking work — and 
his judgments were often very elaborate and able. He had a 
scheme for making himself chief, or president, with a salary ; 
but although this was favoured by the Duke of Wellington, 
who thought him a profound lawyer and great judge, it 
could not be carried, as Peel would not agree to it ; and a few 
years afterwards Brougham grew tired of " his court," and 
deserted it, under the pretence that Sir Edward Kyau, late 
Chief Justice of Calcutta, had been improperly made a 



524 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VII. 

A.D. 1841. 

Creation of 
an Earl by 
Brouo-ham. 



member of it, although every way better qualified than the 
individual whom he wished to be appointed*. 

This was William Courtenay, whom Lord Chancellor 
Brougham, jproprio vigore, created Earl of Devon. He was 
the undoubted male heir to the Courtenays, Earls of Devon, 
but only collaterally. Now the title had been limited to the 
grantee and his heirs male. This limitation, by the law of 
England, was only to heirs male descended from his body, and 
not to heirs male collateral, descended from a common ances- 
tor. Therefore, when heirs male of the body of the grantee 
failed, the title was extinct. So it was universally understood 
ever since the last Earl died, ages ago, and the true representa- 
tive of the family laying no claim to the earldom, had been 
created Viscount Courtenay to him and his heirs male. The 
Viscount's heirs male becoming extinct, William Courtenay, 
eldest son of the Bishop of Exeter, bred to the bar, made a 
Master in Chancery, and afterwards Clerk Assistant in the 
House of Lords, became the representative of this illustrious 
house. He made out his pedigree very satisfactorily, and (as 
he himself told me) he petitioned the Crown that he might 
have a writ sent to him as Earl of Devon, not with any 
thought of being entitled to this peerage, but in the hope that, 
his pedigree being clear, he might be created a peer by favour 
of the Crown, on account of his distinguished lineage, being 
of the same blood as the Bourbons and the Emperors of the 
East. It was referred by the Queen to the House of Lords, 
and coming before a Committee of Privileges (to the astonish- 
ment of all mankind, and particularly of the claimant) Lord 
Chancellor Brougham expressed a clear opinion that the 
claim was well founded. Unfortunately for Brougham the 
point was defectively argued by Sir Thomas Denman, then 
Attorney General, who knew nothing of the subject, and 
omitted to cite the Prince's case from Lord Coke's Reports, 
which would have been quite decisive against the claim. 

Courtenay, from being Clerk Assistant, was now placed 
nearly at the toj3 of the English j)eerage, but unfortunately, 
from having emoluments equal to 5000?. a year, he was 
reduced almost to destitution, and Brougham, thinking the 
members of the Judicial Committee were to have salaries, 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 525 

wished to make proyision for his " belted Earl," according to ^™^' 
ancient royal usage.* But the " belted Earl " was very justly 



considered incompetent, and Kyan, as I have observed, was a.d. 1842. 

appointed in preference. Although Brougham gave this as 

his reason for ceasing to attend the meetings of the Judicial 

Committee, he must have had reasons more stringent ; and a 

more probable one was that all chance of his being made 

*•' President of the Committee of the Privy Council in matters 

of appeal" had died away. 

When Parliament again met he resumed his place in the 3rd Feb., 
House of Lords, locally opposed to the ministers, but resolved P™^^.?^^''^™'^ 

^ " J--L ' locality in 

to lack them most strenuously. Although he always spoke the House 
from the opposition side of the house, after the debate began ° ^^ ''* 
he was seldom in his place, and he moved about very rapidly. 
His favourite seat was the Woolsack, where he seemed to 
enjoy divisum imjperium with Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst. 
When referring to them in debate, I was obliged to call 
the latter " my noble and learned friend on the woolsack," 
and the former, " my noble and learned friend on the edge of 
the woolsack." Lyndhurst, pretending a great deference to 
Brougham's opinion, now acquired a complete ascendancy over 
him, which he strengthened and continued by hints that he 
himself was sick of office, and could not go on much longer 
with Peel, some of whose measures he did not much reUsh, 
and whose "cold, stiff, priggish manners" he exceedingly dis- 
liked. By these or some other means the two law lords 
became strictly united, not only as political partizans, but as 

* I have often rallied Brougham upon his creating William Courtenay 
Earl of Devon. He says that he consulted Lord Chief Justice Tenterden, 
who agreed with him in thinking the claim well fuuuded. 13ut Lord Chief 
Justice Tenterden knew nothing of Peerage laio, and must have come to 
a contrary conclusion if he had heard the question properly argued. If the 
limitation had been "to the grantee and his heirs," it is allowed that the 
collateral heir male could not have taken; and the limitation "to the 
grantee and his heirs male" could not let in the collateral heir. Such a 
limitation of a landed estate could not be made by the law of England, 
and therefore could not be made of a dignity. When I was Attorney 
General, Brougham was about to create another Earl, by making INIr. Hope 
Jolmston Earl of Annandalo; and he had actually congratulated Mrs. 
Hope Johnston as the Countess; but witli the assistance of Sir William 
Follett, I prevented him from completing the creation, and the claim was 
disallowed. 



526 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP, private friends. And they were denominated even in Parlia- 
ment the " Siamese Twins." * 



A.D. 1842. Lyndhurst, although talking in private with the most 
Brougham's unbounded licence of all things and all men, was exceedingly 
^ithLoiT cautious as to what he said in debate, and I had not any 
Campbell, personal conflict with him ; but Brougham for some time, in 
^ alluding to me, persisted in his reckless dictatorial tone. To 
the surprise of the House, notwithstanding his superior repu- 
tation and rhetorical powers, I boldly stood up to him and 
taught him to respect me. These logomachies, by the assist- 
ance of newspapers and caricatures, amused the public at the 
time, but would have little interest for posterity. 

The economical and financial measures which Peel now 
brouo^ht forward threw Brouo:ham into some difficulties. 
Although the commercial tariff was much improved, and the 
importation of cattle was permitted duty free, a duty on corn 
was continued with a sliding scale, contrary to the proposal 
of the ousted Whigs. Brougham had abused them for 
wishing to retain a small fixed duty, declaring that any tax 
on the importation of the necessaries of life was an abomina- 
tion instantly to be swept away. However, he praised the 
new Corn Bill as " a step in the right direction." 
Brougham's ;But he had next to meet a measure directly subversive of 
on^the In- principles in defence of which he had declared that he was 
ready to die, and in defence of which rebellion, if likely 
to be successful, would be justifiable. Soon after his 
entrance into the House of Commons he had acquired 
immense credit by resisting the proposal to continue the 
income-tax for a year subsequently to the conclusion of 
the general peace, contending that it was an imposition 
which, on account of its inequality, oppressiveness, and inqui- 
sitorial nature ought not to be endured in a free country, 
unless during flagrant war. Nay, to destroy as far as possible 
the very recollection of such a tax, and to prevent any wicked 
minister from ever again attempting to resort to it, he had 
moved a resolution which was carried, "that all returns, 
assessments, papers, and documents connected with the income- 

* Sec 78 Ilausard, 137. 



come-tax. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 527 

tax should be immediately burned," omitting " by the bands CHAP, 
of the common hangman," only because such an employment '__ 



of this functionary had fallen into disuse. But Sir Kobert a.d. 1842. 
Peel, after a peace of thirty years, which still remained 
undisturbed, when there was neither war, nor rumour of war, 
proposed a renewal of the income-tax as the basis of his 
scheme for improving the agriculture, manufactures, and 
commerce of the country. What was Brougham to do now ? 
Alas ! — to vote for the hill ! This was very distasteful to him, 
but less distasteful than to endanger Sir Kobert Peel and to 
play into the hands of the Whigs. In the hope of proving 
his boasted consistency he moved certain resolutions (which 
to please him were met by the previous question) reiterating 
his old doctrines about the income-tax ; but he argued that 
this was an exceptional case, that an income-tax in time of 
peace was not so bad as a national bankruptcy, and that the 
blunders of the Whigs since he left them had reduced us to 
this sad alternative.* 

He was now amazingly flattered and petted by the Tory Brougham 
Peers. Without his aid and in spite of his hostility they could the Tor/ 
easily have commanded a decisive majority on every question ; P^^^'^- 
but they said truly that, " thanks to him, they led a very quiet 
and easy life, and got home to dinner every evening at a very 
reasonable hour." They were desirous, therefore, as far as 
decency would permit (and a little farther), to comply wdth 
all his whims, that they might keep him in good humour. 

Of this I had a remarkable instance towards the close of 
the Session. A bill had been introduced into the House 
of Commons to disfranchise Sudbury for bribery and corrup- 
tion, and Roebuck, then a member of that House, spoke for it 
and voted for it. When it came up to the Lords it was to be 
supported and opposed by counsel at the bar, and an announce- 
ment was made that the same Roebuck was to argue for the 
disfranclnsement. I mentioned tlie matter to the Chancellor, 
to the Chairman of the Committees, and to several leading 
Peers on both sides, and they all agreed with me that this was 
a very unseemly proceeding, which ought to be prevented — that 
a member of the other House, who was supposed to have given 

♦ 04 Hansard, 39. 



528 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

^^^^- an unbiassed vote for the bill, should come with a fee to try 
to persuade us either to pass it or to reject it. I accordingly 



A.D. 1842. gave notice of moving a standing order, that "no one be heard 
at the bar of this House as counsel for or against any bill 
depending in this House, who is a member of the Commons 
House of Parliament." Brougham, through whose patronage 
this retainer had been sent to Eoebuck, was thrown into a 
transport of rage, ran to Lyndhurst to denounce the pro- 
ceeding as an attempt to insult Eoebuck, "who, though some- 
times holding ultra-Eadical language, was a very good fellow, 
and might have it in his power materially to assist or damage 
the Government." Lyndhurst was immediately convinced 
that he had taken a hasty view of the question when it was 
first mentioned to him, and not only promised that he himself 
would oppose the standing order, but that there should be a 
Government whijp against it, so that Eoebuck need be under 
no apprehension. The motion was made; but there w^as a 
muster against me as if I had been moving a resolution of 
want of confidence in the Ministers, and I did not venture to 
divide. Brougham relied mainly upon what he had done 
himself in Queen Caroline's case ; but allowed that he intended 
to have resigned his seat in the House of Commons before 
appearing as counsel at the bar of the House of Lords, and that 
he had entered into an undertaking not to vote upon the bill 
or take any part in it when it came into the House of Com- 
moms : and that House further passed a resolution against the 
permission, even on this undertaking, being drawn into a 
precedent.* 
Prosperity For three years following. Brougham's political position 
Peel's Go- ^'^^ relations remained unchanged. Sir Eobert Peel's Govern- 
vernment. ment wcut ou Very prosperously. The dispute with the United 
States of America respecting the boundary bet\\een Lower 
Canada and Maine, which had several times nearly led to 
war, was adjusted by treaty. There was profound peace in 
Europe. Our disasters in Affghanistan were repaired, and 
tlie war with China was terminated honourably and advan- 
tageously. To the astonishment of every one, the income-tax 
was paid without a murmur, and made the Minister more 
* G5 Hansard, 730-751. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 529 

popular, instead of proving his ruin. Altliougli " the sliding- ^^^^^• 
scale " still regulated the importation of corn, many other arti- ' 



cles upon which there had been prohibitory duties were freely a.d. 1843. 
admitted from foreign countries, in exchange for our manufac- 
tures, and various internal taxes were repealed which weighed 
heavily on the springs of industry. The country was in all re- 
spects in a better condition than at the expulsion of the Whigs. 

Brougham not only patriotically but personally rejoiced in 
the contrast, and still continuing in " the front rank of oppo- Brougham 
sition," he acted as trumpeter to the Tories. He was ever JJ^thr^^^ 
ready to defend or palliate any mistake they might commit, Tories. 
and to exaggerate their merits and successes. 

The boundary treaty with America was very much to be 
rejoiced in, the disputed territory being of no real value ; but 
Lord Ashburton, our negotiator, acting on the instructions he 
received, had certainly allowed himself to be overreached by 
Mr. Webster, the American Foreign Minister, and had agreed 
to give up a large district which undoubtedly belonged to 
Canada, and which the simericans had only recently claimed. 
In the House of Commons the Government was contented 
with carrying a resolution, generally expressing satisfaction 
with the treaty. But this was not enough for Brougham, 
and in the Lords, taking the affair out of the hands of the 
Government altogether, he, after speaking three hours from 
the opposition side of the House, moved a resolution — 

" That this House doth approve the conduct of the late negoti- 
ation with the United States, and rejoice in the terms, alike 
advantageous and honourable to both parties, upon which the 
treaty has been concluded ; and doth express its high sense of 
the ability with which the Lord Ashburton, the Minister sent to 
treat with the United States, executed his commission." 

He took this opportunity of levelling many sarcasms at 
Palmerston, the veteran Foreign Minister under the Whig 
Government, showing how much more skill, as well as sin- 
cerity, than he could fairly boast of, had been displayed by 
Lord Ashburton, an ennobled London merchant, who had so 
complet(3ly excelled him in this dii)lonuitic coup d'essai. A 
Peer who spoke against the resolution, having warmly de- 
fended Lord Palmerston, Brougham, in reply, " denied that 

VOL. VIIL 2 M 



530 EEIGN OF QUEEX VICTORIA. 

CHAP, lie had intended to sneer at his noble friend, with whom he 

' had the honour of being a colleague for four years." * . • 
A.D. 1843. Peel said truly that his " great difficulty was Ireland." 
This arose very much from his own imprudent method of' 
meeting the repeal agitation of Daniel O'Connell. He first 
allowed the demagogue for several years to hold " monster 
meetings," which ought at once to have been forbidden and 
dispersed, and to make speeches and to publish writings which 
ought to have been promptly prosecuted and punished as 
seditious. He at last, in one " monster indictment " against 
him, included all the offences which O'Connell and his asso- 
ciates had actually committed, and charged as offences other 
matters of which the criminal law does not take cognizance. 
A conviction having been irregularly as well as unfairly 
obtained upon this indictment, and sentence of imprisonment 
passed, a writ of error was sued out to bring the case before 
the House. of Lords. 
A.D, 1844. When O'Connell's case came to be argued at the bar, 
Part taken Brougham, I belicve, formed a clear and conscientious opinion 
Brougham that the judgment ought to be affirmed. This, of course, he 
neli's case. ^^^ bound to act upon, and there would have been no harm 
in his privately expressing a hope that what he considered 
justice should not be defeated by what he considered techni- 
cality. But from an indiscreet eagerness to support the 
Government, and from personal antipathy to O'Connell, who 
had often talked very irreverently of his doings, particularly 
of his Scottish " progress," now, while supposed to be an im- 
partial Judge, he acted as a keen partisan, and he imputed to 
others the political feelings by which he himself was palpably 
influenced. Mr. Baron Parke having, when consulted by the 
House of Lords, given an opinion in favour of O'Connell, 
Brougham asserted, in the niost direct terms, to private indi- 
viduals, and insinuated very intelligibly, in public, that this 
opinion of the Judge was entirely produced by disappointment 
at his not having been made Chief Baron, when that office 
had been lately vacant. His own opinion for affirming the 
judgment he delivered with unjudicial asperity; and when 
the judgment was reversed, according to the opinion of Lord 

* G8 Hansard, 599-678. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 531 

Denman, Lord Cottenham, and Lord Campbell, lie was actually CHAP, 
in a furious rage, saying in his place that " the decision had ' 

gone forth without authority, and would return without a.d. 1843- 
respect." * He then stepped up to me and whispered in my ^^^- 
ear, " You have created a Peer. Tindal will forthwith be impuLttw/ 
brousfht in to vote ao-ainst you, Cottenham, and Denman. »g^°st 

T-w ^ T 1 /i -n -1 others act- 

JDo you suppose that the Government will go on with a ingjudi- 
minority of Law Lords in this House ? Tindal has a fair f!^^^-^' ^^""^ 

•^ tney were 

claim to the peerage, having been so long Chief Justice of actuated by 
the Common Pleas. He is a man to be depended upon, and ^^yj^ ™^" 
a Peer he will be." I have not a doubt that he recommended 
this step to Lyndhurst and to Peel, for he is very fond of 
offering his advice to any Government which he patronises, 
but Peel would not listen to it ; and Tindal died a commoner. 

I ought gi'atefully to mention the valuable assistance I His valuable 
received from Brougham in carrying through my " Libel j^^Jar^^Jnc, 
BilL"- which allows truth to be o^iven in evidence in prosecu- Lord Cainp- 

. . . bell's bills. 

tions by individuals for defamation, and contains various 
important provisions for the protection of the Press and for a.d. 1843. 
the protection of private character. It was preceded by a 
Select Committee to inquire into the subject, before which 
various classes of witnesses were examined, and, among 
others, the editors of the London newspapers. The ' Morning 
Chronicle ' had attacked Brougham rather sharply on various 
occasions since he had left the Whigs, and Dr. Black, the 
editor, a gentleman of considerable literary eminence, attending 
as a witness, Brougham thus began his cross-examination : — 
" Now, Dr. Black, suppose you resolve to write down a public How a 
man, how do you set about it ? " Dr. Blach : " I never knew ^"^y'be" "° 
any public man written down, excejpt hy himself.'' t written 

Valuable assistance was likewise rendered me by Brougham 
in cari*ying my " bill for giving compensation to the families 
of those who are killed by the negligence of others " — a most 
beneficial adoption (with modifications) of the Scotch law of 
Assythement — approved by all except Railway Directors. 

Brougham and I heartily coalesced to ward off the im- Disruption 
pending disruption of the Church of Scotland. He was j|hmThof 

* Clark and Finnelly's Rep., vol. xi. ; 81 Hansard, 459. Scotland, 

t 66 Hansard, 395. 

2 M 2 



532 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

^VTT^' P^^^^ ^^ ^^^ relationship to Dr. Eobertson, and he took a 
' sincere interest in the prosperity of that Church, of which 
A.D. 1843- the celebrated historian had been for many years the orna- 
1844. jnent and the leader. Having concurred in the judicial 
decisions against the assumption of power by the General 
Assembly to repeal the Act of Parliament which recognises 
lay patronage, we were willing to concur in any measures to 
prevent the abuse of that patronage, and all might have gone 
well. But unfortunately the matter was left by the Govern- 
ment chiefly in the hands of Lord Aberdeen, a " Ruling 
Elder," who was said to have exhibited, in a very edifying 
manner, the gift of extempore prayer in the Kirk Session. 
But by his vacillation and timidity he brought about the 
disruption of the Church of Scotland, as some years afterwards 
he brought about the war with Russia. Producing the im- 
pression that his Government would yield and might be 
bullied, he induced the Non-intrusion party to commit them- 
selves by a step that could not be retraced — like the passage 
of the Pruth by the Czar Nicholas. When we reproached 
him for want of spirit, he said, " He had spirit enough to 
oppose us, and that the House was not to be lawyer-ridden.'" 
Brougham's Brougham was still amused by the prospect of holding the 
becomLg Great Seal under Sir Robert Peel, on the long-hinted-at, but 
President of ^ever approximating, retirement of Lyndhurst. Meanwhile, 
Committee, as a stcpping-stoue, he now more eagerly wished for the Presi- 
dentship of the Judicial Committee, and Lyndhurst was still 
willing to humour him, that he might be kept quiet. During 
the autumn, in his absence, the other members of the Court 
had worked hard and disposed of every case which was ready 
for hearing. On coming back to London, at the meeting of 
Parliament, he moved for and obtained a return of all the 
cases which stood ready for hearing. The return, of course, 
was nil. Thereupon it was concerted between him and 
Lyndhurst that this return should be a peg for a discussion 
on the Presidentship, preparatory to the introduction of a bill 
for establishing it. In consequence, when there was no motion 
before the House, Brougham rose and dwelt upon " the satis- 
faction which the public must feel in finding that the business 
before this high tribunal was done with such dispatch." 



A.D. 1844. 



LIFE OF LORD BKOUGHAM. 533 

Lord (Jhancellor LyndJiurst. — " I take tliis opportunity of stating CHAP. 
mj opinion to be unclianged, that it is necessary to have a per- 
manent head of this Court." 

Lord Brougham. — "I have no objection to such a plan. The 
establishment of the Judicial Committee has been unquestionably 
productive of great benefits ; but it is susceptible of improve- 
ment, and, if supported, I will endeavour to remedy its im- 
perfections." 

Lord Campbell. — " I am of opinion that the system as it now 
stands, works well. AVith my noble and learned friend who 
spoke last, this system originated, and the public are much in- 
debted to the author of it. So well has he framed it, with an 
inherent power of self-development, that it performs all its func- 
tions even when occasionally deprived of its head. How have we 
the boasted return of nil f Because while my noble and learned 
friend was at his chateau in Provence, enjoying the clear sky of 
Italy and the soft breezes of the Mediterranean, we, his humble 
Puisnes, were sitting day by day in the fogs of London, clearing 
off all arrears. We did miss the goodhumoured sallies with 
which he knows how to enliven the dullest drudgery, but still 
the work was done, and (as he vouchsafes to say) so well that 
the public ought to be grateful for our labours." 

Lord Brougham. — " As my noble and learned friend has been 
pleased to bestow compliments on me in relation to the Judicial 
Committee, I beg to reciprocate them— truly and sincerely — 
although I cannot say he throws liveliness on the matters which 
come before that tribunal ; so dry are they, that I defy all the 
liveliness of all the members to enliven them. But I must say 
in all seriousness that I feel very great scruples of conscience and 
much delicacy in calling upon my noble and learned friend, who 
has other avocations, to come and give his hours and labour in 
that Court, and to render purely gratuitous services to the public. 
In the discharge of judicial functions, service merely voluntary 
is a thing to be abhorred. Here sits my noble and learned friend 
in the decision of most important causes, week after week, without 
either salary or pension. This ought not to be. But a remedy 
may easily be adopted at a very small expense to the public."* 

Accordingly he prepared and introduced a bill which 
created a President of the Court, with a salary of 2()00Z. 
a year, and precedence immediately after the Lord Privy 
Seal ; gave the President two puisnes with 1500Z. and 1200/. 

* 72 Hansard, 467. 



oo^ eeig:n' of queen victoeia. 

^^^^' respectively, and contained several otlier clauses enlarging 

, the jurisdiction of the Court. On the second reading he again 

A.D. 1844. entered at great length into the constitution of the tribunal, 
and the necessity for having paid judges to serve upon it. 

Lord Campbell. — " This House is to consider only what the 
public good requires ; and, getting on very satisfactorily as we 
are, either with or without my noble friend, I cannot imagine 
why your Lordships should make any change. For three years I 
have attended assiduously and contentedly, deeming that I have 
reward enough in rendering some small service to my country. 
If we are to have a new head, how do the necessities of justice 
require that the head should be of the quality here described ? 
I know not who the new head is to be ; as to this we can only 
form a not improbable conjecture. But I discover from the 
bill that the head is to be of high rank in the Court and out of 
the Court ; he is to take precedence of all Barons, Viscounts, Earls, 
Marquesses, and Dukes, Knights of the Bath, Knights of the 
Thistle, Knights of St. Patrick, Knights of the Garter, in this 
House, in the Privy Council, at Coronations, Levees, and Draw- 
ing-rooms, and on all occasions, judicial, social, solemn, or merry. 
I am and shall continue proud of the tribunal of which I happen 
to be an unworthy member ; but I cannot conceive how its dig- 
nity or efficiency can depend on its head having such unprece- 
dented heraldic distinction. I shall not object to the bill being 
read a second time ; but unless it be materially altered, I shall 
not be able to give my assent to it." 

The bill being read a second time was referred to a Select 
Committee.* But the job was attacked by the Press in a 
manner which induced the noble and learned Lord, when 
naming the Select Committee, to say : — 

" I am rather astonished —if indeed, after living so long, I can 
be astonished by anything — that the motive assigned to me for 
bringing in this bill is that I want to make a place for myself. 
However, I ought not to be astonished at this assertion, consider- 



* 73 Hansard, 691. Brougham said the intention of the bill was to give 
precedence to the new President only while sitting in Court, but it was 
anxiously framed to give it in all places and at all times. Indeed, his prece- 
dence ill Court required no special enactment. Brougham, by no means 
covetous of money, would have cared very little for the proposed salary, but 
would have had great delight in the proposed precedence. Such weaknesses 
are to be found united with high aspirations. 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 535 

ing tlie numerous race it belongs to — engendered by malice and CHAP, 
ber bastard sister falsebood — both begotten by the father of lies 
upon the weakness of human nature. The person who put forth ^ ^ ^g^^ 
the story ought to have reflected that anything more absurd 
could not have been devised by the wit of man. It is a perfectly 
notorious fact that I have refused such an offer three times over, 
and when my noble and learned friend on the woolsack and 
another noble friend pressed me to it, and when, if I had con- 
sented, the bill would have been brought in with all the weight 
of the Government, I refused it. I did not then see the necessity 
for it as I now do." * 

Upon this Lord John Kussell, leader of the Opposition in 
the Commons, put a question to Sir Kobert Peel, the Prime 
Minister, in the following^ terms : — 

" I wish to call the attention of the right honourable gentle- 
man and of the House to a very extraordinary statement which 
I think the right honourable gentleman will himself be happy to 
contradict. It is said that a very eminent person, some time 
ago, received an offer no less than three times repeated to place 
him at the head of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council 
as a permanent Judge. It would seem the more wise and usual 
course, if the Government considered such a judge necessary, for 
them to introduce their own bill and to carry their bill through 
Parliament, and to allow it to receive the royal assent, before an 
offer was made to any individual of the new judgeship. It cer- 
tainly seems a most extraordinary, — not to call it a suspicious, 
course to propose to any individual, however eminent, that he 
should accept such an appointment, there being at that time no 
office of the kind in existence, and the proposed office being con- 
nected with the Privy Council, — always considered to be so 
immediately under the control of the sovereign." 

Sir Robert Peel was dreadfully puzzled, for he now heard 
of this "New President" for the first time. He would not 
pervert the truth, and having had su(jh steady support from 
Brougham, he was loth to affront him. But the following 
sentence contradicts Brougham very flatly, although not in 
express words : — 

" If the bill in the House of Lords lor appointing a President 



73 Hansard, 796. 



536 KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP, of the Judicial Committee comes down to this House, I have as 
"VII 

unfettered a right to exercise a discretion with respect to it 

. ^ -loAA as the noble Lord himself." * 
A.D. 1844. 

Brougham immediately abandoned the clauses in the bill 
about the new judgeship, and the bill passed, merely altering 
in some particulars the jurisdiction of the Court. The news- 
papers now blamed him for abandoning the clauses about the 
new judgeship when he found that he could not be the judge, 
and he again complained in the House of Lords — 

" that nothing could be more scandalous, false, and audacious, 
for he had explained in his place that he never had a thought of 
being a candidate for the judgeship." -f 

I am bound to say that in this affair we have an ilhistration 
of the remark I have before made respecting Brougham's 
strange practice of recklessly making statements in the pre- 
sence of those who he knew might, if so inclined, have flatly 
contradicted him. But, to use a favourite phrase of his own, 
he really seemed at times to labour under a " hallucination," 
which disturbed his judgment, confused the boundary between 
memory and imagination, annihilated undoubted facts, and 
gave him a momentary belief in that which never had existed. 
Although his statements were not much relied upon, he never 
had the reputation of a wilful teller of falsehoods, and he 
always maintained his position in society as a gentleman. 
His supposed entire want of sincerity may perhaps be ex- 
plained by the diversity of feelings which agitated his mind 
at different times, rather than by his consciously expressing 
sentiments, which at the time of expressing them he did not 
entertain. 
Interview I passod the autumu of 1844 at Boulogne. Knowing that 

between^^^^ Brougham would be passing through on his way to the 
Brougham Chatcau Elcauor Louise, I thought that after our recent 
grapher. cncounters in the House of Lords he might avoid me, but 
he found me out — employed upon my biographical work. 
We were cordial as usual, and he warmly invited me to visit 
him in Provence,- — saying, *' Mind, if you do not come, I will 

* 73 Hansard, 1728. f 7(3 Hansard, 778. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 537 

wi-ite the * Lives of the Chancellors/ publish before you, ^™^* 
and take the wind out of your sails." ' 

"VVe did not meet again till the beginning of the following a.d. 1845. 
Session of Parliament. In the interval I received several 
letters from him, which I have not preserved. Sometimes 
they contained observations upon individuals, which showed 
that they were sent on an implied understanding that they 
should be burnt as soon as read ; but generally, they were 
upon very trifling matters, certainly not wi'itten to be pub- 
lished. 

The Session of 1845 was exceedingly dull. Peel was now Session of 
transcendently powerful, and party struggles had almost '^' 
ceased. In the Lords there was no one to lead the Opposition. 
Lord Melbourne had suffered from an attack of paralysis, and 
although he had so far recovered as to be able to come down 
to the House, he was in such a shattered condition that he 
was not allowed to speak. Under these circumstances Lord 
Lansdowne refused to act as leader, and there was no one 
else who could be recognised in that capacity. 

Brougham had an easy time of it as Protector of the Govern- 
ment. However, daily speaking was necessary to him, and I 
find in the volumes of Hansard for this Session, no fewer than 
one hundred and seventy -four of his speeches reported.* 
But these were almost all upon subjects of temporary 
interest. 

One great speech he made on Law Reform, detailing, with 
great minuteness (the Peers thought tediousness), what he 
had proposed, what had been done, and what remained to be 
done. He concluded by laying on the table nine new bills, 
for the amendment of the law, and moving that they be read 
a first time. But, to his great mortification, although there Brougham 
was a numerous attendance of peers when he began, they J'^pt^"^'' 
were now reduced to three besides the orator, viz., the Lord ^o-^^s* 
Chancellor on the woolsack, Lord Wliarncliffe on the Minis- 
terial side, and Lord Campbell representing the Opposition.! 

* See Index to vol. Ixxxii. I am shocked to say that I found 117 of my 
own, most of them, I believe, provoked by I5ioup;ham. Witliout hi.s lidp tlio 
House would often have adjourned iramediutoly after prayers, instead of 
sitting; to the late hour of half-past seven. 

t 80 Hansard, 515. His pot bill of the nine was a bill to establish Courts 



538 



REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VII. 



A.D. 1845. 



Brougham 
at the Court 
of Queen 
Victoria. 



Sudden 
turn of tlie 
Wheel of 
Fortune. 



I can find no discussions during this Session more interesting 
than those which frequently recurred about the " New Houses 
of Parliament." In these Brougham took a leading part, 
frequently abusing Gothic architecture, Barry the architect, 
and Prince Albert for protecting him. The Prince thought 
to appease him by asking him to dine with the Queen. He 
went and dined, but widened his breach with the Court, by 
leaving the palace immediately after dinner, instead of 
going with the rest of the gentlemen into the gallery, into 
which the Queen had retired with the ladies, and where she 
is in the habit of conversing with her guests. He afterwards 
tried to make amends by attending the Queen's drawing-room, 
— a condescension he had not before practised since her acces- 
sion ; but here again he was unfortunate (although I really 
believe he wished to be civil and respectful) by speaking to 
the Queen ex mero motu as he passed her, and telling her that 
" he was to cross over to Paris in a few days, where he should 
see Louis Philippe, and that if her Majesty had any letters 
or messages for the King of the French, it would give him 
much pleasure to have the honour of being the bearer of 
them." Her Majesty declined, not entirely concealing her 
surprise at the offer, and I believe that he has not been at 
the English Court since. 

In the autumn of 1845, Brougham repaired as usual to his 
chateau at Cannes. When he left England Sir Kobert Peel 
appeared to be established as Prime Minister for life. Chartism 
was extinguished by the strong arm of the law, and still more 
by the increased demand for labour in all departments of 
industry. The Whigs were prostrate, and despaired of ever 
rising again. An agitation was kept up by the Corn Law 
League for free trade in corn, but it made little progress, 
and the " sliding scale " was expected to be permanent. 



of Reconciliation, by which no suit was to be commenced in a Court of Law 
till the parties themselves, without counsel or attorney, had been before the 
Judge of Reconcileuieut, forgetting that ninetecn-twentieihs of the suits com- 
menced are for undisputed debts, and that with respect to the remaining 
twentieth, the i)arties themselves would be quite incompetent to state their 
claims, and the personal altercation would take away all chance of settlement 
or compromise. Of the nine bills only two passed, and they of a trifling 
nature. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 539 

Before Brougham returned to England Sir Kobert Peel had ^S^"^" 

resigned ; the leader of the Whigs had been intrusted by the 

Queen to form a new Government, and had failed in the at- a.d. 1845. 
tempt, and Sir Kobert Peel, resuming his situation, had, with the 
concurrence of all his colleagues except Lord Stanley, pledged 
himself to abandon the sliding scale, and to abolish the 
Corn La\YS. This revolution was caused by a microscopic 
insect gnawing the roots of a plant which essentially contri- 
butes to the food of one portion of the United Kingdom, and 
constitutes almost the entire support of another. Brougham 
long heard with incredulity the rumours of the " Potato 
Famine," and the political consequences which it was likely to 
produce ; but the appalling intelligence at last reached him 
that Lord John Kussell was at the head of a new Whig Govern- 
ment. Where were now his prospects of being Peel's Chan- 
cellor on the retirement of Lyndhurst ? The Whigs again 
in power ! Nor had he the consolation of looking forward to 
an internecine conflict with them, for their Government was 
to be founded on the principle of free trade, of which he had 
always been the advocate, and there might be serious difficulty 
in standing up for his boasted consistency if he were now to 
go over to Protection. But he was recompensed for all this 
mortification and anxiety by the happy tidings that Lord 
Grey's fantastical objection to Lord Palmerston being Foreign 
Secretary had demolished the Whig Government, and that 
he himself might still be the advocate of Prime Minister 
Peel, and the " hammer of the Whigs." In the beginning of 
January, 184G, he cheerily re-crossed the Estrelles, impatient ad. 184g. 
for the coming session, when his consequence would be en- 
hanced by Peel's embarrassments, and the late reward might 
be expected of his steady partizanship. 

It is my duty, however, as a true and impartial bio- Brougham's 
grapher, to relate that he was made very unhappy at this "essTu " 
time by the successful publication of my * Lives of the tiie success 
Cliancellors.' There is no disguising the fact that jealousy, * Lives of 
even of very inferior men, is a striking defect in Brougham's 
character, and betrays him into very unbecoming practices. 
He went about almost in a state of fury, abusing the * Lives 
of the Chancellors.' He wrote himself, or induced others to 



tlie Chan- 
cellors. 



540 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, write, in periodicals over which, he had influence, stinging 
' articles against the book and its author. The most formidable 



A.D. 1846. of these was in the ' Law Keview,' of which he was, and for 
years has continued to be, the director. But much coarser 
abuse was poured out in a succession of ^Letters' which 
appeared in the ' Morning Herald,' long the vehicle of his 
attacks upon those who displeased him. To my great sur- 
prise he one day voluntarily assured me that he was not the 
author of these ^ Letters.' I answered that I was bound to 
suppose they were written by some one who had maliciously 
imitated his style. However, the subject was not further 
alluded to in conversation between us, and we were soon again 
friends as before. 

The repeal of the Corn Laws had been recommended in the 
Speech from the Throne, and the whole Session was occupied 
with that measure and its consequences. Brougham, although 
professing Free-trade doctrines, had been very hostile to the 
Corn Law League, and had very scurrilously assailed Mr. 
Cobden and his associates, when they pressed Peel for an 
utter abrogation of the monopoly of the native corn growers, 
contending that the " sliding scale " was entirely at variance 
with the principle on which, by his new tarifij he had admitted 
so many articles, the raw produce of other countries, to be 
imported duty free. To show his consistency Brougham now 
said : — 

Brougham's " If am asked, Am I one of the League or one of the followers 
denunci- ^£ ^-^^ League, or one of the allies or one of the accomplices of 
Corn Law the League ? I answer, God forbid ! From the members of the 
League. Anti-corn-law League I differ even more than from those who 
stand forward as the friends and the advocates of Protection" 

He then proceeded to argue that under a representative 
monarchy (the best of all governments), the task of governing 
the people should be left to the monarch and the representa- 
tives elected by the people, without the people themselves 
interfering, and he strongly condemned a recommendation of 
Lord Stanley, that before a complete change in our com- 
mercial system, there ought to be a dissolution of Parlia- 
ment, so that the sense of the people might be taken 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 541 

upon it. Being reminded, while speaking, by an irregular ^^^^• 
interjection, of the dissolution during the " Eeform Bill," he ' 



said : — a.d. 1846. 

" I do not mean to deny that there are cases of such vast and 
paramount importance as absolutely to require that the Executive 
Government should appeal to the people. If I were to single 
out from all political questions any one upon which it is expe- 
dient not to make these constant appeals to the people, I should 
say it is precisely on such a question as this." * 

Brougham did not then foresee that when the measure 
was carried. Peel himself, to spite the Protectionists, would 
ascribe the victory to the unadorned eloquence of Eichard 
Cobden. 

At the beginning of the Session, Brougham was sanguine His specu- 
in the hope that the bill being carried by his assistance. Peel |^sped;To^' 
would remain in office, and that there might be an official Peel's re- 
relationship established between them. And so it might have oiBce. ° 
happened if Disraeli had not been raised up as the unconscious 
benefactor of the Whigs. But this consummate master of 
vituperation, thinking to lay the foundation of a great party 
to be formed from the defeated Protectionists, so exasperated 
them against Peel, that they were willing to do anything to 
be revenged upon him, and even to assist in restoring a 
Whig Government. 

Before the Corn Law Abolition Bill came up from the Factious 
Commons to the House of Lords, there had been a division ^J;;l'*'°" ^l 

' VV nigs and 

there, portentous to the Peelites. I must confess, that upon Piotection- 
cool reflection, I feel considerable remorse for the part I took i^e Sern- 
upon this occasion in opposition to Brougham and Lyndhurst, JT"""^ "^'^^ 
although at the moment, while under factious excitement, I ministia- 
rejoiced in it. The Chancellor had introduced a bill for the chaHtif 
"Kegulation of Charities," which was very objectionable in 
some of its details, but which, I am now afraid, was right in 
principle, and might have been so amended as to be made 
salutary. However, the Protectionist Peers, in their rage 
against the Government, offered to vote against it on the 

* 83 Ilansard, 29. 



Charities. 



542 EETGN OF QUEEN YICTOKIA. 

CHAP, second reading, and the ^ATaigs found the temptation into 
'___ which they were led too strong to be resisted. 



A.D. 1846. The argument was against us, but the Protectionists were 
with us, and upon a division we had a comfortable majority. 
This sounded the knell of the Peelites, and Brougham had 
before him the near and painful prospect of a Whig adminis- 
tration. Still, however, the Corn Law Abolition Bill had not 
passed the Lords, and the exact manner in which Sir Robert 
Peel was to be ejected could not be foretold. 
The Corn During the great debate on the second reading of the 

ti'on BiiUn Com Law Abolition Bill in the Lords the House presented a 
the House most singular spectacle, and many considered the result 
doubtful. If the voting had been by ballot, there would 
certainly have been a large majority of Non-contents. But 
the Duke of Wellington exerted himself to the utmost 
to carry the bill, as it had been recommended by the Crown 
and was warmly approved of by the Commons. When peers 
of his party came to him to say how they disliked it, and how 
they wished to be allowed to vote against it, he said to them, 
" You cannot dislike the bill more than I do, but we must all 
vote for it." The Peelite peers in the Cabinet made a 
wretched figure, for in the preceding month of November 
they had tendered their resignation rather than agree to the 
measure, and they were then, on principle, sincere and 
strenuous Protectionists. The Whig leaders alone stood on 
safe ground, as they had always been for Tree Trade ; 
when in office they had proposed to abolish the sliding scale, 
and they had to defend their own policy, adopted by their 
opponents. Brougham answered Lord Stanley, — who having 
left Peel and become the head of the Protectionist and high 
Tory party, had laid himself open to attack by his estimate 
of the unlimited quantity of wheat which might be suddenly 
produced in the steppes of Eussia and thrown into the 
English ports. However he was treated with much tender- 
ness and courtesy by Brougham, w^ho reserved his sarcasms 
for the Whigs, and put forth all his strength in a panegyric 
on Peel. This was his peroration : — 
Brougham's " I should fail of discharging a duty which I ow^e as a citizen 
R Fee^ ^" °^ ^^^^ country, and as a member of this House — a debt of grati- 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 



543 



CHAP. 

vn. 



A.D. 1846. 



tude on public grounds, but a debt of strict justice as well — did 
I not express my deep sense of tbe public virtue, no less than 
the great capacity and tbe higb moral courage which my right 
honourable friend at the head of the Government has exhibited 
in dealing with this question. He cast away all personal and 
private considerations of what description soever, and, studiously 
disregarding his own interest in every stage and step of his pro- 
gress, he has given up what to a political leader is the most 
enviable of all positions, — the calm, unquestioned, undivided sup- 
port of Parliament ; he has exposed himself to the frenzy of the 
most tempest-troubled sea that the political world in our days 
perhaps ever exhibited. He has given up what to an ambitious 
man is much — the security of his power ; he has given up what 
to a calculating man is much — influence and authority with his 
party ; he has given up what to an amiable man is much indeed 
— private friendships and party connexions ; and all these sacri- 
fices he has voluntarily encountered, in order to discharge what 
(be he right or be he wrong) he deemed a great public dut3\ He 
in these circumstances — he in this proud position — may well 
scorn the sordid attacks, the wretched libaldry with which he is 
out of doors assailed, because he knows that he has entitled him- 
self to the gratitude of his country, and will leave — as I in my 
conscience believe — his name to after ages as one of the greatest 
and most disinterested Ministers that ever wielded the destinies 
of this country." * 

The second reading was carried by a majority of forty- 
seven, and thereby the principle of Free Trade was for ever 
established in England, ere long to spread over the globe. 

The bill having passed both Houses and received the royal Peel's ap- 
assent, Peel only looked for the first opportunity of de- end!^""° 
cently retiring. It was rumoured that Brougham advised 
him to remain, offering to "stand by him," but I have 
no sufficient authority for this statement, which may have 
originated merely from the notion of what was probable. 
Although Peel's character afterwards rose very much in 
public estimation from experience of the good consequences 
of his policy, and from his violent and sudden deat]i,t 

* 8G Hanaard, 1170. The subsequent discussions on the bill were very 
prolix and very uninteresting. 

t The fame with posterity of a man's actions during liis life depends much 
upon the time and manner of his death. If Peel had lived on in the common 
routine of parliamentary warfare, and died of old age, ho would have had no 



544 REIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

^j[^^^- lie was not at this time by any means generally popular. 

Not only was he odious to the landed interest, but the 

A.D. 1846. sudden wheel which he made on the question of the corn 
laws — after that which he had made on Catholic Emancipa- 
tion — lowered him much in the estimation of many dispas- 
sionate persons, who thought that if he had sincerely 
changed his opinions upon such important measures, he 
ought to have resigned and allowed them to be carried by 
the party which had always supported them. He discovered 
even that many of his own subordinates now looked upon 
him very coolly, complaining that he had encouraged them 
at the last general election to advocate "Protection" when 
he had resolved to abolish the corn laws, and that to gratify 
his fantasy they were all now about to be thrown destitute 
upon the wide world, whereas they might all have remained 
comfortably in office for many years to come. Therefore, 
although he had once hoped to establish Free Trade and to 
remain Minister, he was now fully aware of his true situation, 
and he felt that not only was there a majority against him in 
the present Parliament, but that upon a dissolution this 
majority would very probably be increased. 
Irish Coer- His next measure pressed in the House of Commons was an 
FeeYsloup ^^^^^ Cocrcion Bill, which had passed the Lords though 
de grace. opposed by the Whigs, Brougham shunning all the discussions 
upon it. The Tory Protectionists might rather have been 
expected to support it, 

" For Tories know no argument but force." 

On the contrary, they were impatient to throw it out. The 
struggle took place on the second reading. The amendment 
that the bill be read a second time that day six months was 
taken as a vote of " want of confidence," and after a debate 

25th June, of six niglits the amendment was carried by a majority of 
seventy-three.* 

Restoration A declaration to both Houses of the resignation of Ministers 

of the 

° ' statues erected to his memory. Had Louis Philippe fallen fighting in the 

insurrection of 1848, he would have been reckoned a great sovereign. Mel- 
bourne would have stood much better in history if he had died the day he 
resigned in 1841, instead of languishing several years a paralytic. 
* 87 Hansard, 1027. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 545 

immediately followed, and Brougham had the mortification to CHAP. 
see a purely Whig Government re-established with Lord ' 



John Kussell as Prime Minister. However, I must do my a.d. i846. 
noble and learned friend the justice to say that he bore the 
reverse with apparent good humour. On the day when the 6th July, 
new Ministers were installed he very courteously congra- 
tulated me on my elevation to the Cabinet as Chancellor of 
the Duchy of Lancaster, telling me I should now have ample 
opportunity of seeing " quantula sapientia regatur mundus." 
Hitherto Brougham had never sat on the same side of the 
house with the Tories ; but the Whigs now taking possession 
of the Ministerial benches on the right of the throne, he did 
not go over with us, and as he remained behind on the 
Opposition side, he might at last have truly said in defence 
of his consistency, " the Tories have come over to me." 

The new Government tested its strength by a Free Trade ^^^^^ °^ ^^^ 
Sugar Bill, making no distinction as to import duties between i846. 
free-grown sugar aud slave-grown sugar. This the Protec- 
tionists, headed by Brougham, violently opposed under pre- 
tence of an anxiety to put down slavery ; but the bill was 
carried by a large majority,* and the session closed with 
auspicious prosj)ects for the Kussell Administration. 

* 88 Hansard, 467, 468. 



VOL. viir. 2 N 



546 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOKIA. 



CHAPTEK YIII. 



1847—1852. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 



A.D. 1847. 

Brougham a 
leader of 
Opposition. 



Combined 
attack of 
Brougham 
and Stanley 
on the 
Chancellor 
of the 
Ducliy of 
Lancaster. 



When Parliament met in the beginning of the following 
year, Brougham boldly and openly avowed himself a leader 
of the Opposition. He took part among the Protectionists in 
line, fronting the Ministerialists, whom he was assailing. 
When I congratulated Lord Stanley upon this accession to 
his ranivs, I warned him against the expectation of finding 
the recruit well disciplined, and advised him to be contented 
if he had the "irregular services of a Cossack." No one 
understood him better than Stanley, who was well pleased 
while in opposition to court him by all reasonable com- 
pliances, but was always cautious not to form any liaison 
with him which might be embarrassing when the time should 
come for forming a new Government. 

Brougham was exceedingly active during the w^hole of this 
session, but he could do no effectual injury to the Govern- 
ment; for as the Peelite peers hated Protectionists more 
than Whigs, we could command a majority on every division. 
I now avoided personal altercations with my "noble and 
learned friend," and handed him over to the new Lord 
Grey — become a member of the Upper House and Colonial 
Secretary — who still fostering the notion that Brougham, 
when Chancellor, had behaved treacherously to the illustrious 
author of the Keform Bill, took great delight in any favour- 
able opportunity for attacking him. 

I was obliged, however, to enter the lists when Stanley 
and Brougham combined against me respecting the appoint- 
ment of four extraordinary members of the Council of the 
Duchy of Lancaster. I successfully turned the matter into 
ridicule, and said that 1 wanted assistance to manage the 
agricultural affairs of the Duchy, for here I was as ignorant 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 547 

as my noble and learned friend, who, wlien the famous Mr. CHAP. 

. VIII. 

Coke (afterwards Earl of Leicester) showed him a luxuriant '__ 



field of drilled wheat, exclaimed, " What beautiful lavender a.d. 1847. 
you raise in Norfolk." Brougham renewed the laughter 
against himself by asserting that he was well acquainted 
with the difference between icheat and lavender, and that the 
story was a weak invention of the enemy. 

To make it all up I invited him and Stanley to dine Avith Dinner to 
me, that I might introduce them to the new Councillors ofVac^tTons 
of the Duchy. They very ffood-naturedly accepted, and, atstrath- 

iM • T 1 T 1 T? n -r 11 1 1 eden House. 

meetmg likewise Lord Jobn Kussell, Lyndhurst, and several 
other leaders of contending factions, we made a " happy 
family," and had a very merry evening. During a lamenta- 
tion upon the usual dullness of the House of Lordg, 
Brougham rather took this as a reflection upon himself, who 
was the most constant performer there, and he declared that 
he had made better speeches in the House of Lords than he 
had ever made in the House of Commons. I could only 
compare him to Milton, who preferred ' Paradise Kegained ' 
to ^Paradise Lost.' 

A few days before the prorogation he made a very long 23rdJuiy. 
and elaborate, but very unsuccessful speech, taking a review Brough? 



lam s 



of the session, in imitation of Lyndhurst. He first lieavily attemptin 



blamed Ministers for all they had done, and much which they 
had omitted to do in the Upper House. He then descended 
into the inferior region of the House of Commons, quoting 
the well-known lines : — 

^ Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbrani, 
Pcrque domos Ditis vacuas, et inauia regna." 

Where nothing could be seen but the ghosts of slaughtered 
biUs— 

" Impositique rogis juvcnes ante ora parentum." 

He concluded by expressing a hope of better things from 
the approaching dissolution and general election. 

"When the 1 Parliament was again restored to its functions, he 
trusted ho should never again have to witness or to lament over 
the history of such a Session — a Session disheartening and dis- 
appointing to the peoi)le ; ruinous to the character of the CJovern- 
ment; injurious even to the Constitution, and damaging beyond 

2 N 2 



to imitate 
Lyndhurst 
iu a review 
of the Ses- 
sion. 



548 



EEIGN OF QGEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 

A.D. 1847. 



Brougliam 
remains 
through the 
autumn iu 
Enoiand. 



Intrigues in 
consequence 
of the dan- 
gerous ill- 
ness of the 
Lord Chan- 
cellor. 



the power of language to describe to tlie reputation of this great 
country all over the world." * 

The truth was that the attention of the Government and 
of the public had been almost exclusively devoted to the 
measures brought forward to alleviate the sufferings of Ire- 
land from famine and pestilence ; and Lyndhurst, finding 
that he could on this occasion make nothing of his annual 
review, cunningly asked Brougham to undertake it, and 
added to his own fame by the failure of a rival. 

Brougham had the m or tiii cation to find that the elections 
went strongly in favour of the Whig Government, and he 
was so much disappointed that, during the short session of 
Parliament held in the autumn, he confined himself to a 
few desultory speeches every evening on presenting petitions. 

Sacrificing the pleasure he usually enjoyed at this season 
of the year in breathing the soft breezes of Provence, he con- 
tinued amidst the fogs of London till Christmas, attending 
the sittings of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Coun- 
cil, and watching over the declining health of the Lord 
Chancellor. 

In the end of November Lord Cottenham burst a blood- 
vessel, and it was generally supposed that he never would sit in 
Court again. While I was reading one evening in the Library of 
the House of Lords, Brougham came up to me, and the following 
dialogue passed between us : JB. — " Since Denman's Act makes 
a witness who is interested competent to give evidence, tell me 
how Cottenham is." C. — " I hear it reported that you are to 
succeed him." B. — '' If I were to take the Great Seal again, 
my first proceeding ought to be to seal a commission of lunacy 
against myself." C. — " Nevertheless some say that you are 
the only man now fit to be Chancellor." B. — " I assure you 
I never wished to have the Great Seal back again after I liad 
resigned it. If Melbourne had only treated me with common 
courtesy, we never need have quarrelled ; and what madness 
would it be now for me to take such an office when I have 
no child to be the better for my toils." Here the tears came 



* 94 Hansard, 570. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 549 

into liis eyes and rolled down his cheeks. C. — "But one 9^:'^^^- 

difficulty is, that Cottenham is recovering, and talks of sitting ' 

in Court again next week." B. — ''K he makes that attempt, a.d. 1847. 
a commission of lunacy ought to be sealed against him. The 
blood-vessel, though a small one, was in his lungs. Now is 
your time." He returned to his difference with the Whigs, 
which he said was all Melbourne's fault. I observed with 
perfect sincerity that " I thought it was a most unfortunate 
occurrence, and that I had always deeply regretted it." 

Cottenham grew worse, and a paragraph appeared in 
the newspapers stating that I was likely to be the new 
Chancellor. This brought out a series of scurrilous articles 
in the ' jMorning Herald ' (Brougham's organ), vilifying 
me, and attempting to prove that I w^as wholly unfit for 
the office. In the morning when one of these appeared, as I 
was walking through the Horse Guards to the Judicial Com- 
mittee in Downing Street, Brougham's carriage drove through 
at a quick pace, and nearly knocked me over without his 
seeing me. When we met I told him of my narrow escape, 
adding, " You seem strongly inclined to run one down." 

It so happened that we now had an Equity appeal from 
Jamaica to dispose of. With the strange insincerity and 
inconsistency of his character he Avhispered in my ear, " You 
must deliver the judgment in this case. It w^ould have a bad 
effect at this time if you were to appear to shirk it." And 
he actually contrived to have the task assigned to me of 
delivering the judgment. 

A few days after, Edward Ellice took me into a corner at 
Brookes's and spoke thus: — "Well, I believe all is going 
right. Johnny has been to consult Melbourne, who I know is 
on your side. This morning whom did I see at IMelbourne's 
but Brougham? when Melbourne, who is the indiscreetcst 
of mankind, said to him, * You must lay your account witli 
seeing Jack Campbell Chancellor.' Brougham then inveighed 
against you, and said he would never sit in the House of 
Lords with such a Chancellor; declared that it would be a 
mad appointment, as it would disgust the Equity bar, and a 
bad one for the public, as you would not venture to overrule 



550 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOKIA. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 



A.D. 1847. 



A.D. 1848 

State of 
France. 



Brougham 
tries to be- 
come a na- 
turalised 
Frencii citi- 
zen and a 
Deputy to 
the National 
Assembly. 



the Vice-Chancellors ; that Eolfe was the man who would 
please the profession and the Peers. I said, * Campbell is 
the yery man to do his duty boldly ; although I should have 
been better pleased to see him Chief Justice of the Queen's 
Bench, if Denman were to resign.' He declared that you were 
equally unfit for that office, and that what law you might ever 
have had you must have forgotten. Melbourne said, ' Never- 
theless, Brougham, you must be prepared to see Jack holding 
the Great Seal.' " 

Whimsical change ! Brougham and Lord Melbourne in 
familiar intercourse — gossiping about giving away the Great 
Seal after their bitter quarrel and mortal enmity, occasioned 
by this " pestiferous bauble " ! 

In the beginning of January Cottenham recovered, the 
articles against me in the * Herald' ceased to appear, and 
Brougham went to his chateau at Cannes. 

Passing through Paris he, as usual, paid his respects to 
Louis Philippe, and attended a meeting of the Institute. 
Paris was a little agitated by the coming political banquets 
which the Government had prohibited; but although there 
was a considerable outcry about the "Spanish marriages," 
no serious apprehension was entertained, and the Orleans 
dynasty seemed firmly fixed upon the throne of France. 
The only doubt was whether the aged Sovereign would 
survive till his grandson, the Comte de Paris, should be 
of age. Louis Philippe, jumping over a rail to show his 
agility and strength, exclaimed prophetically and truly, '' 11 
n'y aura pas de regence." 

There was no regency ; for in a few weeks Louis Philippe 
was an exile, and his dynasty was overthrown. 

Brougham was at his chateau near Cannes when the Revo- 
lution took place, which placed France under the arbitrary 
rule of the Provisional Government formed by the con- 
tributors to a newspaper. It might have been supposed 
that he would immediately fly to England, and assist by 
his advice in guarding his native country from the new 
perils with which she was threatened. But a strange 
phantasy entered his brain. The Provisional Government 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 551 

had called a Xational Assemble, to be elected by universal CHAP. 

" Till 

suffrage, "all Frenchmen of the age of twenty-one years 



to be electors, and all Frenchmen of twenty-five years ^ jj_ 1348. 
to be eligible," with an allowance of twenty-five fi^ancs a 
day to each deputy during the session. The department of 
the Var, in which Brougham's chateau stands, was to have 
niuB deputies. Many candidates came forward, in the 
hop3 of being enriched by the promised daily stipend : but 
Broigham had far loftier views. He counted with certainty 
on naking a distinguished figure in the Assembly by his 
eloqience, and he sanguinely believed that, from his superior 
knoTNledge of parliamentary tactics, he might gain such an 
ascenlancy as to be elected President, and so guide the des- 
tinies of France, of Europe, and of the world. He announced 
himblf as a candidate for the department of the Var, and he 
was veil received by the inhabitants of Cannes, who were 
flatteed by the preference he had shown for them, Avho were 
pleasd by his popular manners, and who hoped by his influ- 
ence t) obtain another svhvention for the 'completion of their 
haiboir. He knew that Tom Paine, Anacharsis Clootz, and 
se'erd other foreigners, had sat in the first National Assem- 
bl, and, having been long a loro^rietaire in France, he did 
nt anticipate any difficulty from his having been born in 
SDtland. He was told by the authorities of his depart- 
mnt that, before he could either vote or be elected, as he 
hi no qualification by birth, he must produce an " acte de 
n:uralisation," but that this might easily be obtained at 
B-is upon the formal certificates which would be forwarded 
t(the i\[inister of Justice. 

To Paris accordingly he posted — meeting (as he afterwards 
td me) trees of Liberty planted in every town and village 
tbugh which he travelled, with the inscription Liberie, 
Mite, Fraternite. He asserted that during his whole 
ja-ney he refused the usual homage demanded of travel- 
\q — to be uncovered, and to repeat tliese mystical words — 
aae foresaw that the madness of the people would be short- 
lid. Nay, he added that he sometimes harangued tliem at 
csiderable length, in the hope of bringing them to a bettor 



552 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

<^AP. mind. But it is difficult to conceive how at the beginning of 
' his candidature he should be guilty of such imprudence. 

A.D. 1848. Although he smarted under the forced payment of the ''addi- 
tional centimes " — a tax imposed by the Pro visional Govern- 
ment under the despotic power which they had assumed — 
he must have been reluctant to insult the emblems of tie 
regime which he was to swear that he would support. 

As soon as he reached Paris he addressed a letter to Cito^en 
Cremieux, Minister of Justice, and the following correspodd- 
ence passed between them : — 

" Paris, April 7th, 1\ 

Correspond- "Lord Brougham has the honour to offer his respects tj the 
the Minister Minister of Justice ; and wishing to be naturalised in Franc^, he 
of Justice, has demanded certificates from the Mayor of Cannes (Yar), wljere 
he has resided for the last thirteen j'ears, and where he posseses 
a landed estate, and has built for himself a country Ipuse 
(chateau). Those certificates are to be forwarded directly ^^ the 
Minister of Justice, and Lord Brougham requests the Minisbr to 
transmit to him the act of naturalisation with as little dejty as 
possible." 



" The Minister of Justice to Lord Brougham. 

" Paris, AprH 8th, 1848. 
"My Loud, — I must apprise you of the consequences of tli 
naturalisation you demand, should you obtain it. If FraiK 
adopts you for one of her sons, you cease to be an Englishmai 
/ou are no longer Lord Brougham, you become citizen Broughai 
You lose forthwith all titles of nobility, all privileges, all advai 
tages, of whatever nature they may be, which you possesse 
either in your quality of Englishman, or by virtue of righ 
hitherto conferred upon you by British laws or customs, ar 
which cannot harmonise with our law of equality between a 
citizens. This would be the effect, my lord, even did not tl 
British laws possess that rigour with regard to those Briti^ 
citizens who demand and obtain their naturalisation in foreid 
countries. It is in this sense that you must write to me. ' 
must presume that the late British Chancellor is aware of tJ 
necessary consequences of so important a demand. But it is i. 
duty of the Minister of Justice of the French Republic to warn y( 
officially. When you shall have made a demand in form ei 
bracing these declarations, it shall be immediately examined. 

" A. Cremieux." 



LIFE OF LORD BROUQHAM. 553 

Brougliam was mucli surprised and mortified by this rebuff. CHAP. 

His yision of Gallic greatness yanished ; he could no longer ^_ 

even expect the honour of delivering a speech in the National a.d. 1848. 
Assembly, and he was afraid of the ridicule to which this un- 
successful attempt might expose him among his friends of 
the Institute. He therefore resolved to proceed immediately 
to England. There, at any rate, he must have agreeable 
excitement, and his abortive citizenship would escape notice 
in the crisis which seemed approaching, for the 10th of April 
was the day fixed for the Chartist insurrection in London. 

During his passage across the Channel, however, he thought 
that he might answer the objections to his naturalisation, and 
possibly gain his object, without sacrificing his English peerage 
and his English pension. Accordingly, the moment he entered 
his house in Grafton Street, without consulting any human 
being, he wrote and despatched the following missive : — 

"London, April 10th, 1848. 
" MoxsiEUR LE MiNiSTRE, — T havG the honour to acknowledge 
the receipt of your obliging letter of the 8th. I never doubted 
that by causing myself to be naturalised a French citizen I 
should lose all my lights as a British Peer and a British subject 
in France. I will retain my privileges as an Englishman only 
in England ; in France I should be all that the laws of France 
accord to the citizens of the Eepublic. As I desire above all, the 
hapjnness of the two countries, and their mutual peace, I thought 
it my duty to give a proof of my confidence in the French insti- 
tutions, to encourage my English countrymen to confide in them 
as I do. 

" H. Brougham." 

The following answer was received in course of post : — 

" Paris, April 12th, 1848. 

" My Lord, — My letter has not been understood. Yours, to my 
great regret, does not permit me to comply with your demand. 
You do me the honour to write to me, ' I never doubted,' &c. 
[Copying Lord B.'s letter.] I used the clearest and most positive 
expressions in my letter. France admits no partition — she 
admits not that a French citizen shall at the same time be the 
citizen of another country. In order to become a Frenchman, 
you must cease to be an Englishman. You cannot be an English- 
man in England, and a Frenchman in France ; our laws are 
absolutely opposed to it. You must necessarily choose. It was 



554 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 



A.D. 1848. 



Citizen 
Brougham 
in the 
House of 
Lords. 



for that reason that I took care to explain to you the conse- 
quences of naturalisation. In that position, therefore, and as 
long as you will remain an Englishman in England, — that is to 
say, as long as you will not abdicate completely and every- 
where your quality of British subject, and exchange it for that 
of French citizen, it is impossible for me to give effect to your 
demand. 

" A. Cremieux." 

, The correspondence was closed by a short note from 
Brougham to the Minister of Justice, formally renouncing all 
naturalisation in France. 

At the meeting of the House of Lords in the evening ot 
the 10th of April, when, by the judicious dispositions made 
under the advice of the Duke of Wellington, and, still more, 
by the good sense and spirited firmness of the great mass 
of the population of the metropolis, the Chartist movement, 
which many thought would revolutionise England, had proved 
an utter failure, Brougham presented himself in the House 
of Lords and took part in the discussion^ as if he had never 
contemplated a divided allegiance, and he gave notice of 
a motion for the next day, that he might review the 
recent revolutionary proceedings in France, in Italy, and in 
Germany. 

But the hope that his citizenship would pass unnoticed 
was disappointed. The Provisional Government having heard 
that he wished to enter the Assembly with no friendly inten- 
tions, not only refused his request, but immediately stated in • 
one of their journals (the * Keforme ') that he had applied to 
be naturalised as a French citizen, and in a few days published 
in the ' National ' the whole of the correspondence between 
him and the Minister of Justice — to the great amusement of 
France and of England. In his elaborate speech on the 
11th of April he animadverted with much severity upon the 
Provisional Government in the country which he had recently 
visited. Thus he launched his sarcasms at his fellow-citizens 
with whom he still wished to fraternise : — 

" I dispute not the right of five-and-thirty millions to bear the 
dominion of twenty thousand ; and of the things which the chiefs 
of these men are now doing every day in the name of the whole 
people we have no right to complain; the fruits, the bitter fruits, 



LIFE OF LOKD BROUGHAM. 555 

will be gathered by themselves. My prayer is that they may be CHAP. 
less bitter than I dread and believe." * 



Lord Lansdowne, in answering him, observed that the a.d. i848. 
expression of these sentiments gave him particular satisfac- 
tion, as they showed that there could be no foundation for 
the strange rumour which had been set afloat, that his noble 
and learned friend wished to become a naturalised French 
citizen, with a view of leading the debates in the French 
National Assembly, instead of continuing the ornament of 
their Lordships' House, in which he had presided with so 
much lustre. 

He was treated with much severity by the press, both 
French and English. I shall give only two specimens. The 
* National ' of April 18, 1848, contained a paragraph, of which 
the following is a literal translation : — 

" So it was really no joke after all ! Lord Henri Brougham Articles on 
really wished to become a citizen of France, and addressed a Byouo-ham 
formal demand to that effect to our Provisional Government ! It in the 
is incredible, but true nevertheless. His Lordship, however, by g'j^^„"i^gij'^'^ 
no means intended to surrender his privileges as an English newspapers. 
citizen. Milord wished to amalgamate the two. France is a 
beautiful country, no doubt ; but England has also its attrac- 
tions, which are not to be voluntarily abandoned. How to 
reconcile this double inclination ? Milord had discovered a very 
ingenious plan, the contraction of a second marriage without 
dissolving the first. We remember hearing the story of the 
condudeur of a diligence who had one wdfe at Paris and another 
at Toulon, who went on very amicably for a while, but at last 
the Toulon wife paid a visit to Paris, and discovered her rival. 
Lord Brougham conceived an idea not altogether dissimilar ; in 
short, he contemplated the perpetration of a political bigamy ! 
How will prudish England receive such a disclosure? We 
cannot tell; but we confess that were we in the place of milord, 
we should feel slightly embarrassed. Let him extricate himself 
as he best can. Fortunately for us, it is his affair, and not ours." 

And the following is part of a leading article in the * Times ' 
of the same date : — 

" All who remember English history for the last forty years, 
speak of Henry Brougham as the most eccentric figure in that 



98 Plansard, 143. 



556 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 



A.D. 1848. 



Brougham 
supports 
the Whig 
G over 11- 
ment. 



eventful period. So mucli of greatness in words, and so little 
dignity in action, have never been found in the same individual. 
Now shaking the House of Commons with his eloquence, and 
now exciting the laughter of schoolboj^s, still it is the same mar- 
vellous man. Lord Brougham has just thrown the highest 
somersault that he has ever accomplished. It is not sufficient 
for him to have plaj^ed the Edinburgh Eeviewer, the English 
Barrister, to have propounded startling theories in science, to 
have been created an English Peer, to have translated Demos- 
thenes, and to have passed himself as the greatest orator of his 
age, — like Alexander, he sighed for other worlds, not to conquer, 
but in which to display his eccentricities. ... A National 
Convention is still open to the Citoyen Brougham. He may yet 
rival Vergniaud in eloquence, and employ the remainder of his 
life in reconstituting civilisation in France. Eor this turbid pre- 
eminence we find him almost ready to sacrifice ermine, coronet, 
pension, and all. When sacrificed at last before the rising 
demagogues of the new Mountain, and led off to the Place de la 
Kepublique in a cart, he will devote the brief minutes of his 
passage to chanting, with sincere enthusiasm and strong Nor- 
thumbrian burr, 

' Mourii" pour la Patrie, 

C'est le sort le plus beau et le plus digne d'envie/ " 

No other man than Brougham could have recovered from 
the unextinguishable ridicule which now seemed to overwhelm 
him. But I have already had occasion to celebrate the sin- 
gular faculty which he possessed of again rising to the surface 
when it was thought he had sunk to rise no more, and of 
afterwards pursuing his course as if no misfortune had befallen 
him. He continued to speak every night upon every subject, 
except his correspondence with M. Cremieux. The nickname 
of " Citizen Brougham " did not fix itself upon him, as might 
have been expected, and at the end of a month it was forgotten 
that he had ever aspired to lead the debates in the French 
National Assembly. 

During the remainder of this Session his hostility to the 
Government was much mitigated. He gave me very 
powerful support in carrying through the House of Lords 
a bill for amending the marriage law of Scotland. This 
was framed upon the principle that tlie parties should be 
allowed to enter into the most important of all contracts 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 557 

with any religious ceremony, or without any religious cere- CHAP, 
mony, as they pleased, — but by some palpable form, cajDable '_^ 



of easy and certain proof. Brougham discussed the subject a.d. 1848. 
several times with great force and effect, and although the 
bill had been strongly opposed at first, it was read a third 
time with one dissentient voice — that of the Earl of Aberdeen 
— who (as Brougham asserted) insisted upon marriage being 
retrospectively established by verbal acknowledgment, out of 
respect for the memory of his grandmother, who had never 
been married at all, but had been made an honest woman of 
by acknowledgment long after the birth of her son, the present 
Earl's father. This joke reached his Lordship's ear and exas- 
perated him so much that he vowed he would have the bill 
thrown out in the Commons ; and as he showed much more 
vigour in opposing it than he afterwards did in opposing the 
Czar of Eussia, he triumphed. Cunningly appealing to the 
thrift of the Scottish members, in canvassing them he con- 
trived to persuade them that the registration of the marriage, 
which the bill required, would bring a heavy pecuniary burden 
upon Scotland. Thus Gretna Green still flourishes, and many 
persons in Scotland are unable to tell whether they are married 
or single, and many others whether they are legitimate or 
bastards. 

Such an entente cordiale was there now between my noble My visit to 
and learned friend and myself, that I could no longer refuse Biwham 
liis often-repeated invitation that I would visit him in West- ^'''^^• 
morland. So, after the prorogation, accompanied by my 
wife and one of my daughters, I entered his mansion, for- 
merly " Brougham Hall " — now simply " Brougham." 

We were most hospitably and kindly received, and spent 5th Sept. 
several days very agreeably in exploring the romantic beauties 
of Westmorland, and conversing with my " noble and learned 
friend." I really believe that both he and I were quite sin- 
cere for the moment in testifying good-will towards each 
other. Indeed I still feel, not only regret, but something 
savouring of remorse, when I am obliged, as a faitliful bio- 
grapher, to record anything which may seem not altogether 
to the credit of one with whom I have spent so many pleasant 
hours. 



558 



KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 

vin. 



A.D. 1849. 

Brougham 
enlists with 
the Protec- 
tionists. 



He resists 
the repeal 
of the Na- 
vigation 
Laws. 



I did not see him again till the commencement of the 
following Session of Parliament in February, 1849. He then 
regularly enlisted himself under the Protectionist banner, and 
with respect to whijps, ^roxy, jpairing, and divisions, was con- 
sidered one of that party as much as Lord Hardwicke, Lord 
Salisbury, Lord Kedesdale, or any other of their oldest and 
most devoted adherents. 

A Ministerial crisis was now expected from the proposal 
of the Whigs to abolish the Navigation Laws. All who 
had enlightened and disinterested views upon the subject had 
come to the conclusion that " free trade " could not be said to 
be established till commodities could be conveyed from one 
port to another in ships that might sail the fastest and at the 
lowest freight, whatever country they might belong to, and 
by whatever crew they might be worked. Therefore, after 
great deliberation, Lord John Kussell's Cabinet resolved 
unanimously to bring forward a bill to abolish the Navigation 
Laws, and to stake our existence on its success. But the 
measure was by no means so popular as the repeal of the Corn 
Laws. All British shipholders thought that they had an 
interest in preserving their monopoly; our seamen were told 
they would starve when Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians, who 
could live on bread made of the bark of trees, were permitted 
to come into competition with them ; and a very general pre- 
judice prevailed, even among men of education not engaged 
in commerce, that our naval greatness depended upon pre- 
venting foreign ships from trading to our colonies, and re- 
quiring that commodities, the growth or manufacture of foreign 
countries, should be imported into the United Kingdom either 
in British ships or in ships of the country in which the com- 
modities are grown or manufactured. As Brougham had 
always gloried in being the apostle of Free Trade, and had 
assumed to himself much of the merit of at last sweeping 
away the Corn Laws, it might have been expected that he 
would be the philosophic statesman and powerful orator wlio 
would on this occasion quell the mercenary cry of self-interest 
dispel the delusion of the misguided, and, carrying out the 
principles of Free Trade to their legitimate results, would have 
quieted the apprehensions of well-meaning ignorance. But, 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 559 

on the contrary, he placed himself at the head of the oppo- CHAP. 
nents of the Ministerial measure, and, in the most unscrupulous ' 



manner, called sordid self-interest, " crass ignorance," and a.d. isid. 
vulgar prejudice to his aid. When the grand battle was to 
be fought in the House of Lords on the second reading of 
the bill, it had been arranged by Lord Stanley that Lord 
Colchester, an old naval of&cer, should lead the assault ; but 
Brougham superseded him, his zeal and impatience being- 
kindled to the highest pitch by the intelligence he received 
that, on counting the forces on both sides, the Protectionists 
had superior numbers present in the House, and were sure of 
victory. 

He began, as usual, with a panegyric on his own con- 
sistency, and asserted that from the year of grace 1801, 
when he began to write his book on Colonial Policy, down to 
the year of grace 1849, when he was addressing their Lord- 
ships, he had always stood up for the same doctrines in 
political economy as well as in every other department of 
political science ; he allowed that the best and cheapest 
conveyance of goods from port to port should be permitted 
for the benefit of commerce — but then he went on to show at 
prodigious length that the naval greatness of England, and 
the safety of the country from foreign invasion, required that 
we should adhere to the navigation laws, Avhich had been 
enacted by the wisdom of our ancestors, and which every 
succeeding generation of Enghsh statesmen had applauded. 
He, of course, made much of Adam Smith having considered 
the English navigation laws wise and wholesome, and an 
illustrious exception to the general rule that trade should be 
free. A speech of three hours he thus concluded — alluding 
to the threat of Ministers to resign if they were beaten, and 
the probability of this threat being carried into execution : — 

" I do not, on any account whatever, either public or private, 
from any feeling whether of a general or personal kind, desire to 
see a change of the Government. But the rihk of any change I 
am prepared to meet rather than see the highest interests of the 
empire expo.sed to niin. This measure I never can hear, because 
the national defence will not bear it. All lesser considerations 
of party policy or parliamentary tactics at once give way ; and I 



560 KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

CHAP, have a question before me on which I cannot pause or falter, or 
treat or compromise. I know my duty, and I will perform it : 
as an honest man, an Englishman, a peer of Parliament, I will 
lift that voice to resist the further progress of the bill."* 



VIII 



1849. 



ists 



Defeat of After a second night's debate the division took place, and 

and^ir"^ Brougham's anticipation of triumph seemed verified, for of 
Protection- the peci's present only 105 said content and 119 said non- 
. -content, giving the Protectionists a majority of 14. But 
proxies were called, and the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and 
all the peers holding diplomatic appointments on the conti- 
nent of Europe, with other noble Government fimctionaries 
who were absent, having left their proxies with Lord Lans- 
downe, there were 44 absentees who supported the ^N^avigation 
Laws, while 68 absentees condemned them. So the bill was 
read a second time by a majority of 10. 

Articles appeared in the ' Morning Herald ' on the abuse 
of proxies, and the Lords were threatened, not only with the 
loss of their anomalous privilege of voting without listening 
to the arguments for or against the proposition to be deter- 
mined, but with an entire subversion of all their constitutional 
powers. Meanwhile it was felt that the crisis was over, 
• that Free Trade had triumphed, and that the Government 
was safe. Brougham and Lord Stanley expressed a confident 
hope that in the committee on the biU (where, according to 
well-established usage, proxies are not admitted) they sliould 
so mutilate the bill as to render it harmless ; and in the 
committee they moved an amendment to effectuate their 
object ; but this was not considered fair parliamentary war- 
fare ; the muster of Protectionist peers fell off, and the 
amendment was rejected by a majority of 13. 

Brougham had been very sanguine, and was deeply morti- 
fied, but he affected hilarity, and allowed himself to be 
rallied by his familiars upon his disappointment. While the 
Navigation Bill was depending, I happened to call upon him 
one morniug in Grafton Street to talk to him about a Scotch 
appeal, and was shown into his library. He soon rushed in 



* According to liis practice when he had made what he considered a great 
speech, he published this speech, '' revised by himself," as a pamphlet. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 561 

very eagerly, but suddenly stopped short, exclaiming, " Lord CHAP, 
bless me, is it you? they told me it was Stanley;" and ' 



notwithstanding his accustomed frank and courteous manner, a.d. 1849. 
I had some difficulty in fixing his attention. In the . 
evening I stepped across the House to the Opposition 
Bench where Brougham and Stanley were sitting next each 
other, and addressing the latter in the hearing of the former, 
I said, — "Has our noble and learned friend told you the 
disappointment he suffered this morning ? He thought he 
had a visit from the Leader of the Protectionists to offer 
him the Great Seal, and it turned out to be only Campbell 
come to bore him about a point of Scotch law." Brougham : 
" Don't mind what Jack Campbell says ; he has a pre- 
scriptive privilege to tell lies of all Chancellors dead and 
living." 

Many jokes were circulated against Brougham on this 
occasion. A few days after his great speech I myself heard 
Lyndhurst say to him, — "Brougham, here is a riddle for 
you. Why does Lord Brougham know so much about the 
Navigation Laws ? Ansiuer : Because he has been so long 
engaged in the Seal fishery. '^ 

During the remainder of this session Brougham continued 
exceedingly factious. He supported the bill I brought in 
to enable the Government to transport Smith O'Brien, con- 
victed of high treason, instead of hanging and beheading 
him as the convict himself required ; but he vigorously 
opposed almost every other bill of which I had the charge — 
particularly the Irish Encumbered Estates Bill — which has 
done more to tranquillize and to civilize Ireland than any 
other Saxon measure. 

Having acted as Lord Commissioner in proroguing Parlia- -1st Aug. 
ment, I parted with Brougham on rather unfriendly terms, 
and I laid my account with his continuing pertinaciously in 
every way to hinder my advancement. But (strange to 
recollect) he had now formed the resolution that I should Biougiiam 
succeed Lord Denman in the Queen's Bench ; and, if I had ^^g^^e ^J" 
been his own brother, he could not more zealously have Chief Jus- 
exerted himself to accomplish that object. During the imid. '' 
autumn I received several letters from him on the subject. 

VOL. VIII. 2 o 



562 EEIGN OF QUEEK YICTOEIA. 

^^^^- The last, beginning "My clear C, vulgo clearest Jack," 
'__ contains the following postscript : — 

A.D. 1849. " Between you and me, Denman will never sit again. My own 
opinion is that you must take it. Then if Cottenham goes you can 
easily slide in there. I have given this as my decided opinion to 
all inquiring friends. I am ready to stand by you to the death in 
BOTH arrangements, and in H. of Lords. This I do partly for your 
own sake, partly for the public ; and you are at full liberty to 
quote me if of any use. 

"Yours, 

"H. B." 

In December the great " Gorham Case " upon " Baptismal 
Eegeneration " stood for hearing before the Judicial Com- 
mittee of the Privy Council, and Brougham, who was then at 
Cannes, was very desirous of having it postponed that he 
might preside when it was adjudged. He had vast delight in 
playing the judge in any cause cMebre. " II s'amuse a juger," 
said a Frenchman who had visited England and knew him 
well. When the occasion required he would boldly plunge 
into ecclesiastical law, and he had gained much notoriety by 
a judgment which he wrote upon the question whether a 
clergyman of the Church of England was bound to read the 
burial service over a child which had been baptized by a 
dissenting minister — not by a priest episcopally ordained. 
He admitted that the dissenting minister was only to be 
considered a layman, but he showed that lay baptism, in the 
form prescribed in the Gospels, is, according to the usage of 
the early Christians, the authority of the Fathers, the decrees 
of general councils and canons of the Church of England, 
sufficient to purge original sin and to convey saving grace, 
tanquam instrumento.* He would, no doubt, very learnedly 
have discussed the question whether " prevenient grace " 
was necessary to give full spiritual effect to the sacrament of 

* Dr. Plnlpotts, Bishop of Exeter, in talking over this judgment with me, 
allowed it to be nil', but insisted that it was defective, by omitting the qualifi- 
cation that lay baptism, to be eflfectual, must be administered by a lay man or 
woman in communion in'th the Church, and that it is unavailing if administered 
by a Dissenting minister, who must be consid(>red a heretic or a schismatic. 
Such, however, is not the doctrine of the Church of England ; and Brongham's 
judgment is still considered good law. 



LIFE OF LORD BROUGHAM. 563 

baptism ; but we could not decently keep the public three CHAP, 
months longer in suspense to suit his convenience. I wrote to 



say that postponement was impossible, and explained to a.d. 1849. 
him the difficulty of putting off the hearing of a case 
upon which so much depended. In truth we were rather 
glad to dispose of it in his absence, for we were not sure 
Avhat view he might have taken of it. In the course of 
the discussion there would have been great danger of his 
saying something which would have scandalized either the 
party inclining to Eomanism or the party inclining to 
Calvinism, and for the j)eace of the Church we were glad 
to be able to decide, with the approbation of the two Arch- 
bishops, that Gorham, notwithstanding his opinion upon the 
necessity of " prevenient grace," was entitled to be inducted 
and instituted. 

Brougham was now deeply engaged in a course of experi- Brougham 
ments upon Light. He had told me that he had made a himself to 
great discovery which " Newton had nearly approached, but science. 
had not reached." In passing through Paris, he explained it 
in a lecture to the Institute, assisted by diagrams which he His lecture 
drew with chalk on a black board. I have been told that his the French 
brethren all showed great self-command in keeping their institute. 
countenances while he addressed them in French (or, as 
Macaulay calls it, in " Broughmee "), but that, in spite of all 
their politeness, some of them did smile a little at the 
supposed discovery, and the fluctional calculations by which 
it was proved and illustrated. The lecture was afterwards 
written out by him and published in the * Transactions of the 
Institute.' A copy of it, which he was good enough to 
present to me, now lies before me,* but I must confess my 
inability to criticise it. This, however, I will boldly say that 
Brougham must be a very extraordinary man to have de- 
livered such a lecture, whatever solecisms in language or in 
science he may inadvertently have fallen into. Neither 
Lord Bacon nor Newton himself ever performed such a feat, and 

* Institut Imperial de France. 'Eecherchca Experimcntales ct Analy- 
tiqucs sur la Luniiorc' Par Henri Lord Brougham, Associ6 ICtranger dc 
rinstitut Imperial, et Mombre de la Societe lloyale do Londres et do 
1 Academie Ilnyalc de Naples. 

2 o 2 



564 EEIGN OF QUEEN YICTOEIA. 

CHAP, althoiigrh Cicero did declaim in Greek, he confined himself 



VIII. 

to literary subjects without yenturing to rival Archimedes. 

A.D. 1850. When Brougham returned to London, in the end of January, 
1850, he strove to bring about the resignation of Lord Denman 
and the appointment of myself to be Chief Justice, as if 
he had had no other object in this world. The latter event 
had been settled three months before, upon the contingency 
of the former, which had become very desirable for the 
public good, but was extremely doubtful from mental malady. 
By Brougham's friendly interposition the necessity for any 
interference of the two Houses of Parliament was obviated, 
and the succession took place without the public being made 
aware of the difficulties which had retarded it. 

I select from his correspondence at this time the letter 
containing Brougham's admonitions to guide me on my 
elevation to the bench, which appear to me very sensible, 
although it may be thought that they show that he con- 
sidered himself the heau ideal of a perfect judge : — 

" Grafton-street, Wednesday Evening. 
Brougham's " My DEAR C. — As you are now Chief Justice, I will use a court 
12!?,!..!^ freedom. I advised Denman, and also Wilde; the former fol- 

me on my «' ' ' _ 

beconung a lowed my advice, and benefited ; the latter's habits were too 
Judge. strong, and he 'did not follow, and was the worse for it. 

" Don't suppose the truisms I am going to give out are therefore 
valueless. They are really all the better. 

^' First. I beg of you to regard your first w^eek as youi' most im- 
portant, even on circuit ; certainly in banc. All the impression 
a man is ever to make does not turn on his start, but nine parts 
in ten do ; and if the start is inauspicious, he has an uphill work 
to do for long and long. 

" I had some luck in immediately on entering Chancery having 
a good case to start on (an old client of yours, De Tastet), and I 
overruled bad bankrupt law of Mansfield (Sir J.). The benefit T 
had hence, and of a judgment in Dom. Prod., the day I first sat 
there, was inconceivable. My arrears prevented me from retain- 
ing my first gains. But I afterwards, by written judgments 
(quite necessary), recovered lost ground. Therefore I repeat, 
consider every one matter as a difiicult thing to be got over by 
diligent care, and expend yoiu' entire force on every one thiug, 
small as well as great, for the first week or two ; afterwards you 
can afford to take 3'our own ease in your cs^ti court. 



A.D. 1850. 



LIFE OF LOKD BEOUGHAM. 565 

" Second. I need not remind you of tlie fatal error Scarlett, CHAP. 
Pollock, and others made of thinking lightly of judicial difficul- 
ties, because they had been leaders, and not pleaders. Ko doubt 
your business is to take large views like a leader, but nine parts 
in ten of your work is akin to the pleader's ways. This is an 
error you are not the least in risk of falling into. 

" Third. Politics are now not forbidden ground — but ground 
rarely to be trodden. However, even party votes, and, in cases 
of great gravity, debate, are by no means to be considered out of 
your sphere ; for why ? those subjects may be such as you must 
conscientiously deem important, and calling for your inter- 
position. 

" Fourth. After Denman has set the fashion, and been followed 
by Lyndhurst, I hardly require a return to the wig and gown, to 
which my own very decided opinion inclines. Consider this — 
I am unprejudiced. 

" Lastly. I really think it right for both yourself and the 
public that you occasionally attend the Privy Council ; for 
example, in such cases as the * Shrievalty. 

" Excuse these matters, prompted by regard, and wholly con- 
sistent with confidence and respect ; and wishing you a long 
and happy reign over learned puisnes and civil barristers, 

"Believe me, &c., 

" H. Brougham." 

He presided at tbe ceremony of my taking leave of the 
Society of Lincoln's Inn, of which we had long been brother 
benclaers, and on this occasion he delivered a beautiful and 
well-deserved eulogy upon the talents and the virtues of my 
predecessor, to whom I really think he was attached by the 
ties of true friendship. 

On the 27th of May Lord Cottenlvam actually resigned, Resignation 
and the Great Seal was put into Commission. Still, Brougham cotterhim 
was as hostile as ever to the Government, and on the 17th of 
June he spoke and voted for Lord Stanley's resolution 
to censure Ministers, on account of their foreign policy, which 
(being carried by a majority of thirty-seven) almost every one 
believed would turn out the Whigs. However, Lord John 
remained firm, and a counter-resolution was carried in the 
Commons by a majority of forty-six. 

* Word illegible— 1-^d. 



b6Q ' EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOKIA. 

CHAP. The accession of the Protectionists to office was postponed, 
but could not be very distant. 



invests him 
self with 
the func- 
tioas of 



A.D. 1850. In the mean time Brougham amused himself by doing all 
Brougham the dutics of Chancellor in the House of Lords. Lord 
Langdale had been appointed Speaker; but he never did 
more than put the question, as if he had been Speaker with- 
Chancelior out being a peer. I was now too much occupied with my 
ofLords^^^*^ duties as Chief Justice in my own court to take part in 
hearing appeals or attending to divorce bills, and I cautioush' 
abstained from personal or party contests. Brougham deter- 
mined that, as far as the House of Lords was concerned, he 
himself should be Chancellor cle facto. Formerly he had 
professed to be of the clamorous party who were for dividing 
the judicial and the political functions of the Lord Chancellor, 
and he had actually himself brought in a bill for that purpose. 
But he now insisted that there was nothing objectionable in 
the combination of these functions, and that they might all 
be satisfactorily performed by one individual of competent 
ability and industry. His theory was to be illustrated by a 
great example. He therefore took possession of the pending- 
divorce bills (for which he always showed a great relish), and 
although the arrear of appeals and writs of error had alarm- 
ingly accumulated from Cottenham's illness, he resolved to 
clear off the whole before the end of the session, without any 
assistance. 

Accordingly, he set to work in a most extraordinary 
manner, assisted by two lay lords, in rotation, to make a 
house. I know not that any serious injustice was done, but 
the whole proceeding was considered very unseemly, and 
much obloquy was thereby brought on the Government. In 
consequence Lord John Kussell resolved abruptly to put an 
end to the Commission, and pressed the Great Seal on Lord 
Langdale, arguing that although he could not attend to the 
judicial business of the House while he was Master of the Rolls 
and Lord Commissioner, as Chancellor he might stop the 
comj)laints upon this subject which had become so loud. 
Lord Langdale ex23ressed great delight at the prospect of 
being relieved from his duties as Lord Commissioner, but 
positively refused to take the Great Seal as Chancellor. He 



his func- 
tions on the 



LIFE OF LOKD BEOUGHAM. 567 

had always had an utter horror of coinino; into collision with CHAP. 

VIII. 
Brougham, and now, from broken health, he was more than 

ever unequal to the congressus. Lord John knew well that a.d. 1850. 

he need not make the offer to the Chief Justice of the 

Queen's Bench^ who, since his promotion, had openly declared 

his resolution to refuse the Great Seal if offered to him, and 

he resorted to the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, who 

after much hesitation accepted it. 

But the object was not in the slightest degree effected of July. 

dethronino' the usurper. Brous'ham said that there were Brougham 

declines to 

some cases which he had begun to hear, and others which he ky d 
had appointed to be heard, and which he must finish ; he 
frightened the new Chancellor by saying that they involved appoint- 
some of the most abstruse intricacies of Scotch law; ad- LordTmro 
Adsed him to confine himself for the rest of this session ^s ciian- 

cellor. 

to the Court of Chancery, and held out a hope that he 
might during the long vacation, with the gigantic industry 
which characterized him, make himself master of Craig, 
Erskine, and Stair. Lord Truro, who knew as little of the 
law of Scotland as of the law of Japan, yielded to the gentle 
violence, and actually did confine himself to the Court of 
Chancery for the rest of the session. 

Brougham was, therefore, undisputed master of the field, 
and met with only one check. Kesolved to dispose of all 
the Common Law writs of error, as well as the appeals, 
Engiisli, Irish, and Scotch, he had summoned the Common 
Law Judges to attend in several cases which raised ques- 
tions of great importance and difficulty. Unwilling that 
they shoukl be so disposed of, I made a motion in the 
House that they should stand over till another session ; 
on the ground (assumed, to avoid giving offence) that the 
Judges, not expecting such a summons, had formed arrange- 
ments with respect to their own courts, and the Court of 
Exchequer Chamber, which could not now be disturbed 
without serious public inconvenience. Brougham was in a 
great rage, as if I had been taking a morsel of bread out 
of his mouth when he was liungry, and accused me of want 
of courtesy in not giving liim notice of the application ; but, 
afraid to divide the House, he ungraciously yielded. 



568 



EEIGN OF QUEEN YICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 

A.D. 1850. 

His judicial 
perfurin- 
ances in the 
absence of 
the Lord 
Chancellor. 



Attacks 
upon him 
in the 
Press. 



5th Aug. 



He oom- 
plains of 
breach of 
privilege for 
a libel upon 
him. 



All the other cases he actually did decide, and I be- 
lieve that all his decisions were defensible, with the 
exception of one, in an appeal from the Court of Chan- 
cery upon the construction of the " Winding-up Acts," and 
the liability of " ]3ro visional committee men." This de- 
cision of his caused dreadful confusion, both at law and in 
equity, and apprehensions were entertained that an Act of 
Parliament would be necessary to set it right. But, to save 
Brougham this disgrace, which he himself once proposed 
to put upon Lord Wynford, we contrived, during the next 
session of Parliament, by a little straining and ingenuity in 
a similar case, to draw distinctions whereby the law upon this 
subject was satisfactorily re-established. 

Although no real fault, I believe, could properly be 
found with the other decisions, Brougham, as a single Judge, 
certainly did not enjoy the confidence of the bar or of the 
public ; and although he might at last get right, he was in 
the habit of rashly blurting out observations during the 
argument which showed that at the time when he made them 
he had no correct notion either of the facts or of the law 
on which he was to adjudicate. Accordingly, the newspapers 
contained letters from correspondents, and even leading 
articles, complaining of the manner in which the judicial 
business of the House was transacted in the absence of the 
Chancellor, who was severely censured for abdicating his 
duties. 

Brougham, who had expected immense applause for the 
manner in which he had performed his Herculean task, was 
greatly enraged by these attacks, and a few days before 
the prorogation made a formal complaint of breach of 
privilege on account of the libels published upon the ad- 
ministration of justice in their Lordships' House. After a 
few introductory remarks, he thus proceeded : — 

" A more unjustifiable, a more indecent, attack on any court of 
justice I have never seen in the whole course of my experience. 
I have been sitting for the last six or seven weeks in the admi- 
nistration of justice in your appellate jurisdiction, assisted by 
other Peers not law lords. Of law lords I was the only one able 
to attend. I undertook — I voluntarily undertook — this duty. I 



A.D. 1850. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 569 

sate as the only law lord while the Great Seal was in commission ; CHAP. 

• VIII 

and on the appointment of my noble and learned friend to the 

M'-oolsack, hearing that there were heavy arrears of causes in his 
own court, I felt it my boiinden duty still to assist him and yonr 
Lordships in getting rid of the arrears before yon. I have heard 
causes as important and difficult as ever came before you. I have 
.sate as many as five and six days in the week, Wednesdays and 
Saturdays included — contrary to the usage of your Lordships. I 
have succeeded, and arrears there are none. All the causes ready 
for hearing have been heard, and all that have been heard have 
been adjudicated upon. And I will venture to say that even in 
cases where I have been under the necessity of reversing the 
decision of the court below, the united opinion of the profession, 
not excluding those members of the bar against whose arguments 
1 decided, is in favour of the judgments I have delivered. But 
I am attacked as if I had wantonly entered on a career of injustice 
— setting law and decency at defiance. First the calumniator 
says, ' this is the first time that appeals have been heard in this 
House the Chancellor not being present.' Ignorance or false- 
hood ! When my noble and learned friend Lord Lyndhurst last 
held the Great Seal, my noble and learned friends Lord Cotten- 
ham, Lord Campbell, and myself, sate in turn three times every 
week, and decided long causes, sometimes in conjunction, and 
sometimes separately. Then the libeller proceeds, ' The number 
of cases knocked off in the Lords ;' as if some one had bragged of 
the precipitate haste with which cases had been decided. I need 
not tell your Lordships that I never used so vulgar and low-bred 
an expression. ' The number of cases knocked off in the Lords 
has been C(msiderable ; but whether they have been gravely and 
attentively heard, maturel}^ considered, and satisfactorily dis- 
posed of, is a question which will not be agreeably answered on 
inquiry amongst the able men who for six weeks past have been 
pleading at the bar of the House of Lords.' And then comes 
more stupid ribaldry as to my motives in sitting as judge in the 
House of Lords. I should regret indeed if now, for the first time, 
and after a long professional career, and after twenty years of 
judicial experience, I had aflbrded grounds for any such remon- 
strance, betokening, on the part of the bai", a want of confidence 
in my learning and my honour." 

''■Lord Chancellor Truro: Though I sought no assistance, my 
noble and learned friend, in his zeal for the public service, was 
g(;od enough to undertake to hear and decide the appeals in this 
House, and to leave me more at liberty to deal with the business 



570 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



VIII 

A.D. 1850. 



CHAP, of the Court of Chancery. I believe generally that the profession 
is desirous that the person who holds the Great Seal should pre- 
side over the judicial business in this House. But I have no 
reason to doubt that this business has been very satisfactorily 
disposed of by my noble and learned friend in my absence." 

All his The Duke of Wellington and Lord Lansdowne compli- 

recoverhir rented Lord Brougham for his zeal in the public service, 
the Great and here the matter dropped without any steps being taken 
ever ruined, to detect and punisli the libeller.* Lord Stanley was, un- 
fortunately, present at this exposure on the complaint of 
" breach of privilege ;" and from that time it was pretty 
certain that, if ever a new Conservative Government Avas to 
be constructed, Sugden would be Chancellor. 
Papal ag- Soou after, all England rang with the cry of "Papal 

gression. aggTCSsion," in consequence of the Bull of Pio No^^o, creating 
Cardinal Wiseman Archbishop of Westminster, and dividing 
the kingdom into Koman Catholic dioceses. Brougham, al- 
though for allowing all reasonable latitude to religionists of 
all denominations, had a laudable dislike of ultramontane 
popery, probably sharpened by his education in Presbyterian 
Scotland. Therefore, he did not disapprove of Lord John 
Eussell's letter to the Bishop of Durham, which sounded the 
alarm for Protestantism and national independence ; and he 
afterwards even gave support to the " Ecclesiastical Titles 
Bill," while he lamented that some defensive measure, less 
insulting and more effectual, could not be proposed. 
V D 1851 When Parliament met in the beginning of February, 1851, 
Brougham was favourably disposed to Lord John Kussell's 
Government. Lord Stanley, who had hitherto conciliated 
Brougham's services by all fair means, had lately shown 
symptoms of alienation as the prospect of being "sent for" 
became nearer, that there might be no perplexing claim upon 
him, which he could not refuse without being liable to the 
charge of bad faith, nor concede without detriment to his party 
and to the country. There had even been some sharp skirmish- 
ing between them, in which each of them claimed the victory.f 

* 113 Ilnnsnrd. 841. 

t This happened when I was absent on the circuit. When I returned, 
Stanley said to me, " I have found it necessary to punish the Cossack," and 
Brougham said to me, " I have been obliged to show up that schoolboy Ned." 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 571 

But, nnliiclvily, Brongliam now quarrelled with. Lord CHAP. 
Truro, the new Chancellor, to whom he at first affected to ^__ 



extend a condescending protection, powdered with a few a.d. 1851. 
occasional sneers and sarcasms. The quarrel proceeded on r.rougham's 
two grounds : 1st. Truro, at last, insisted on taking care him- ^ith Lord 
self of the Divorce Bills, and on being present himself at the ^ruro. 
hearing of all appeals and writs of error. 2ndly. He would 
not dispose of his patronage as Brougham desired. Ilagrant 
war between them was ultimately occasioned by a vacant 
Vice-Chancellorship. Brougham had a most amiable passion 
(if he had not carried it to such excess) for favouring all who 
were related to him by blood. He had a younger brother, 
William, of unexceptionable character and rather clever, but 
not well qualified for a high judicial appointment. Henry, 
when Chancellor, had made him a Master in Chancery. He 
now pressed Trm^o to make him a yice-Chancellor : for this, 
among other reasons, that he might obtain for him a re- 
mainder of the peerage of Brougham, although he was not 
next collateral heir male. Truro — who during his short 
Chancellorship displayed much honesty and discrimination 
in his judicial appointments — absolutely refused to gratify 
him in this respect. Hence Brougham, in furore, declared 
that "Jonathan Wilde had become a courtier; and, having 
married the -Queen's cousin, laid all his patronage at the 
Queen's feet. As to her having all the livings in the Chan- 
cellor's gift, it does not so much signify ; but it will never 
do to let the Com't dispose of judicial appointments." 
Lyndhurst was now in hot opposition, and he easily jjre- 
vailed upon Brougham, so incensed, to join in annoying 
the Chancellor, and doing anything to damage the Whigs. 

The Session had made little progress when Lord John 
Russell was driven to tender his resignation, and Lord Stanley 
and L(jrd xVberdeen were successively sent for, and succes- 
sively tried in vain to form a Government. Brougham was 
deeply moitiiied to find that at this ciisis no offer was made 
to him, and lie was consulted by no one. In his own opinion 
the Queen, considering his great experience in public lite, 
his freedom from all party connections, and his high reputa- 
tion with all sorts and conditions of men, ought to have 



572 



KEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 



A.D. 1851. 



Brougham 
gives up 
the great 
game of 
politics. 



employed him to form an administration, of which he should 
be the efficient head, either being Lord Chancellor or First 
Lord of the Treasury, if not Lord High Treasurer. Not only 
no messenger came to Grafton Street from Windsor, but 
Lord John Kussell, by the advice of the Duke of Welling- 
ton, was reinstated in office, and all his Cabinet — without 
Brougham ever having received any communication resiDect- 
ing the pending negotiations from Whig, Peelite, or Pro- 
tectionist. 

I think he may now be considered as having given up the 
great game of politics at which he had played with almost 
unexampled boldness and brilliancy above forty years. 
Henceforth we shall still find him making speeches in 
Parliament, for speak he must by the necessity of his nature 
wherever he finds or can make an opportunity of speaking, 
but he no longer tried any great coup d'etat, he had no 
scheme for his own political aggrandisement, and he was 
guided by the impulse of the moment, merely gratifying a 
momentary whim without any arriere pensee. He even gave 
up almost entirely " Education," the " Administration of 
Charities," and " Slavery," confining himself to his favourite 
hobby Lmv Amendment. This hobby he did continue to ride 
" fast and furiously," to the no small annoyance of his brother 
Peers, and I may say of all the Queen's subjects-. 

I have diligently looked through the five volumes of Han- 
sard for Session 1851, without being able to find anything in 
his many speeches with which I could hope to edify or amuse 
the reader. He supported the important Bill for appointing 
two Lords Justices of Appeal in Chancery, whereby the 
office of Lord Chancellor escaped the long-threatened bisec- 
tion and retained all its patronage, although its salary and 
its jprestige were very much reduced. But now he did not 
care about the office, except in as far as the public was 
concerned. There were some smart skirmishes between 
liim and me about the Crystal Palace, which amused the 
House and the town at the time, but w'ere soon forgotten. 
Having at first violently opposed the erection of this struc- 
ture in Hyde Park, he afterwards went over to the Piix- 
tonians and resolutely contended that Hyde l\irk should be 



LIFE OF LOKD BEOUGHAM. 573 

permanently sacrificed to it, contrary to a pledge given both ^^j^f' 
by the Crown and the House of Commons. But fortu- ' 



nately he was defeated. a.d. 1851. 

However, by the end of October all our differences seemed % visit 

buried in oblivion. I then paid him, with my family, a most chateau 

ao^reeable visit at the Chateau Eleanor Louise, on the shore f^^^^^^' 

^ , ^ Louise. 

of the Mediterranean, as we were returning from Italy. He 
still talked of " Jonathan Wilde," or '' Tom, the Queen's 
cousin," but did so now without any rancour, and he ap- 
peared so mild and gentle and goodhumoured that no one 
would have believed that he ever could have had a provoked 
or unprovoked enemy in the world.* 

At the opening of the Session in 1852 Brougham was at Factious 
his post, and, without any ulterior view beyond badgering of Lord T^ 
the Lord Chancellor, joined with Lyndhurst in obstructing brougham 
the law reforms proposed on the part of the Government, hurst." 
To such a pitch of factiousness did they proceed that they 
complained of the Common Law Procedure Act for not going 
far enough, although it corrected flagrant abuses which had 
existed without disturbance while the two vituperators respec- 
tively held the Great Seal, and it made a greater change in 
the courts of common law than had been effected by all the 
statutes that had passed since the reign of Edward 1. Lynd- 
hurst even went so far (Brougham cheering him) as to com- 

* In a short account wliicli my father wrote of his journey in 1851, 1 find the 
following mention of his visit to Lord Brougham : — " I felt great curiosity 
and interest when, after changing horses at Antibes, I drew near to the 
chateau of ' my noble and learned friend.' ... 1 found him quite alone, — 
that is, with one gentleman (Mr. Vane), who always goes abroad witli liim as 
his ' companion.' His place at Cannes is indeed most exquisitely beautiful. 
Pie calls it 'Chateau Eleanor Louise,' in honour of liis daugliter, to whose 
memory lie is still tenderly attached. There are inscribed upon the walls 
verses in her praise by himself, by the late Lord Carlisle, and by the late 
Lord Welleslcy. I thought the sight of my tlirec daughters strongly revived 
the recollection of licr in his mind, and that he was assailed l)y the sense of 
his own derelict condition. He comes, a solitary being, to a foreign land, 
where there is no one to welcome him, without any occupation to excite liim, 
the projects of ambition which he has been fostering since his fall from power 
for ever blasted, and the infirmities of old age perceptibly laying lidld of 
him. At first he seemed very melancholy, but he gradually briglitened uj) 
as we talked over our old friends. ... He conversed very agreeably about 
the culture of his oranges and his olives, but ho chiefly delighted in discuss- 
ing the ))ills of the last stssion and those of the session which is to come. As 
to the forthcoming new lleform Bill, we were pretty well agreed." — Ed. 



574 



EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 



CHAP. 
VIII. 

A.D. 1852. 



Fall of Lord 
John Rus- 
sell. 



Piegret of 
Lord 
Brougham . 

Brougham 
under 
Lord St. 
Leonai'ds as 
Chancellor. 



1st Julv. 



Overthrow 
of the 
Derbyites. 



plain that written allegations of the complaint and of the 
defence were not entirely swept away, — so that the parties 
might come before the jndge, verbally state their case, and 
at once have a final adjudication upon all their difierences. 

Lord John Kussell at last fell by his own imprudence in 
bringing forward, to please the Kadicals, a new Eeform Bill, 
which all parties condemned, the principal enactment being 
a resuscitation in groups of the rotten boroughs extinguished 
by himself in 1832. Brougham imagined that his opposi- 
tion had materially contributed to the change, and for this 
he quickly felt remorse. Instead of '' Jonathan Wilde " he 
now saw on the woolsack Sugden, whom he disliked more 
heartily. 

Brougham bore the misfortune with apparent magnanimity. 
In public he affected to be rather cordial with the new 
Chancellor, but he poured out his griefs pathetically into the 
ear of a private friend. The truth was that he stood con- 
siderably in awe of Sugden, who was infinitely superior to 
him in professional knowledge and had far higher reputation 
as a lawyer, while infinitely inferior to him in eloquence and 
in liberal acquirements. When I returned from the Spring 
Circuit in April I found that the new Chancellor had been 
setting all the law lords at defiance, and had threatened to 
repeal a bill which I had introduced as head of the Beal 
Property Commission, to regulate the execution of wills of real 
and personal property. I was called in by Brougham to assist 
in repressing this " aggression," and we gave our *' noble and 
learned friend" a lesson which made him comparatively 
modest and humble during the remainder of his short tenure 
of office. 

After the prorogation and dissolution of Parliament, 
Brougham remained in England for the autumn session pro- 
mised by the Protectionists for bringing forward their mea- 
sures. But he made no memorable speech during the exist- 
ence of the Derby Government. The struggle which resulted 
in its overthrow was carried on exclusively in the House of 
Commons on Mr. Disraeli bringing forward his rejected 
budget. 

Brougham was rather pleased with the coalition of the 



LIFE OE LOSD BEOUGHAM/ 575 

Peelites and the WL-io^s wliich now took place. He felt no CHAP. 

. . . VIII. 
disappointment in not being included in the arrangement, for '__ 

he sincerely and hond fide had renounced all hope, and, I 
belieye, all wish of resuming office. Instead of the formid- 
able Sugden he saw on the woolsack the meek and pliable 
Kolfe, created Lord Cranworth, whom he expected easily to 



A.li. 1852. 



belieye, all wish of resuming office. Instead of the formid- Brougham 
able Sugden he saw on the woolsack the meek and pliable coalition 

between the 
Whigs and 

manage. Lord Aberdeen would be more grateful for his Peeiites. 
support than Lord Derby had been. The only interested 
object which he now had in view for himself or his family 
was to obtain a remainder of his peerage for his brother 
William. He once had a great desire to become an Earl, 
but this was entirely extinguished by the elevation of Cotten- 
ham to that dignity. When Lord John Eussell conferred 
that promotion on the retiring Chancellor, Brougham was 
very indignant, and either wrote or dictated a pamphlet 
ridiculing it, to which was affixed, rather felicitously, as a 
motto " The offence is Kank." 



576 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 



CHAPTEE IX. 



1852 — APRIL, 1859. 

CHAP. I HAVE now brouglit down the life of Lord Brougham to the 
^ end of 1852, marked by the fall of Lord Derby's Govern- 

ment.* Since he became a parliament man. my narrative has 
the years been divided by years or sessions of parliament, and I have 
1856 *^ hitherto found without difficulty something memorable that 
he had done, spoken, or written in each of these portions of 
time. He has retained his mental and physical powers 
almost quite unimpaired, but his career has become much 
more quiet and uniform. I will not say that " the flaming 
patriot who scorched us in the meridian now sinks tem- 
perately to the west, and is hardly felt as he declines." But 
if I were to continue any minuteness of detail I should now 
have only to relate year by year how he left his chateau at 
Cannes in the middle of January, and, passing a few days in 
Paris, turned up in the House of Lords on the first night of 
the session to make some desultory observations in the debate 
on the Address in answer to the Queen's Speech ; how he pre- 
sented many petitions to the House every evening, taking the 
opportunity of reminding their Lordships of what he had 
done and what he still intended to do for law reform ; how 
he claimed the county courts as his creation, and attempted 
to give the county court judges unlimited jurisdiction over all 
matters civil and criminal, legal and equitable, military and 
ecclesiastical ; how he made repeated speeches on the same 
subject — when giving notice of a motion, when withdrawing 
the notice,* and renewing the notice — as well as when the 
motion came on; how he still made himself prominent in 
the House by a copious distribution of praise and censure 

* The memoir was resumed at this point by my father in the year 1856, after 
an interval of three years. — Ed. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 577 

amono: those he mentioned or alluded to ; how he was CHAP. 

T X 

ever esteemed a very delightful companion in private, flat- ' 



tering his friends to their face and laughing at them be- a.d. 1852- 
hind their back; how he affected to attend judicially to ^^^^' 
the hearing of appeals when he was writing notes to his 
male and female acquaintances at the rate of a score in 
a morning; how he gave pleasant dinners at which he 
loved to assemble those with whom he had had the bitterest 
cparrels, and charmed them all with his good humour and 
kindness ; how he delivered speeches at the Law Amend- 
ment Society, exalting himself and vilipending all com-- 
l^etitors in the race of law reform ; how he steadily made 
the ' Law Keview ' a tiresome vehicle of self-laudation and 
vituperation of others; how he would get sick of such 
occupations about Easter, and run off for relief to rapid 
motion and the sight of the Mediterranean sea ; how at 
the end of a month he would return and resume his old 
course till the end of the session, having in the mean time 
2:»ublished various speeches and pamphlets, and prepared new 
editions of some of his innumerable works ; how he then 
retreated to Brougham Hall, where he hospitably entertained 
those whom in his wTitings he had attacked, was attacking, 
and intended to attack ; how the unceasing rains and mists of 
Westmorland drove him away in search of a more genial 
climate ; how in Paris he gave lectures on his philosophical 
discoveries to the members of the Institute, who, notwith- 
standing their natural politeness and respect for his energy 
and perseverance, experienced some difficulty in steadily pre- 
serving a countenance of admiration ; and how he again 
hybemated in the Chateau Eleanor Louise till awoke by the 
(Queen's proclamation summoning another session of Parlia- 
ment at Westminster. 

The repetition of such matters year by year would be irk- 
some, and for the joint benefit of my "noble and learned 
friend " and myself it will be better that I should merely, in 
a few sentences, mention anything that has subsequently 
occurred respecting him out of the common routine to which 
I have referred. 

Although he might have been very willing to accept He supports 

VOL. VIII. ijp J;;V^^"- 



578 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP, the Great Seal from Lord Aberdeen, he did not consider 
___1^__ himself aggrieved by being passed over, full well knowing 



A.D. 1852- that there were various members in the coalition cabinet 
■^^^^' to whom he was obnoxious. Himself being excluded, he 
w^as much pleased to find, as a companion in exclusion. 
Lord Truro, on whose stubborn nature he could make no im- 
pression when measures were to be framed or places disposed 
of. Kolfe he considered to be made of more " squeezable 
materials ;" and he loudly praised the choice of a new Chan- 
cellor. 

Following the practice to which he had adhered since he 
first entered the House of Lords, of sitting on the ministerial 
benches only when he was m opposition, Brougham continued 
to sit on the opposition benches when the Derbyites came 
over to the left of the throne ; but, affecting impartiality, he 
decidedly favoured the new ministers. He exercised a sort 
of protectorate over them, and threw away much good advice 
upon them in public and in private. Lord Aberdeen, and 
Lord Clarendon, the foreign secretary, w^ere extremely civil 
to him, and received his admonitions with seemingly sincere 
deference. Ever since the year 1827, when he went across 
the floor of the House of Commons, and ^' stuck his knees 
into the back of Canning," his chief delight in life had been 
to appear the patron of a rickety administration, without con- 
descending to take office under it. 
Theappel- The appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords now got 
dlclion^of i^'to great disrepute. The law lords who attended the hearing 
the LorJs. of appeals were Lord Cranworth, Lord Brougham, and Lord 
St. Leonards. If the last agreed with the two former, it was 
generally for different reasons. Brougham coalesced with 
Cranworth, so as to bring about a decision by a majority ; but 
when he was absent, the two others disagreeing, the vote was 
one to one, and they unwisely resolved, instead of having the 
case re-argued before all the law lords, to allow on such occa- 
sions the judgment always to be affirmed. But when Brougham 
was present, he attended so little to what was goiug on, and 
so indiscreetly betrayed his ignorance by irrelevant questions 
jmt to the bar, that the joint opinion of himself and the 
Chancellor carried little weight with it, and the law was more 



LIFE OF LOKD BEOUGHAM. 579 

and more unsettled by every fresh decision of the court of last CHAP, 
resoi-t. Brougham was disposed to play the tyrant over his ' 



protege, and in the exercise of the Chancellor's patronage, and a.d. 1852- 
permitting bills to pass the Lords which were sure to be ■^^^** 
rejected in the Commons, he required very disagreeable con- 
cessions. Though none of these were inconsistent with 
strict honesty on the Chancellor's part, some of them ap- 
proached very close to the line which separates right from 
wrong ; and, in the Chancellor's situation, I certainly should 
have resisted them at the peril of a rupture, although not 
unconscious of the importance, with a view to a quiet life, of 
Brougham's support in the House of Lords. 

I must, however, do Cran worth the iustice to record, that Courts of 

, , , '^ reconcilia- 

he assisted me in withstanding Brougham's scheme to prevent tion. 
any action being commenced adversely till the parties had first 
been brought together face to face in a " Court of Eeconcilia- 
tion." Brougham repeatedly pressed upon us this his pet 
reform, forgetful that of the actions commenced there are not 
five in a thousand which arise from a personal quarrel, or in 
which the parties understand or are capable of explaining 
their conflicting claims, — the far greater proportion of actions 
being brought to recover undisputed debts ; so that the pro- 
posed preliminary attempt at reconciliation would mischie- 
vously add to the delay and expense of litigation, and would 
in many cases operate as a denial of justice. 

Brouo-ham thoug-ht that he would beat us both on a still The Crimi- 

. . . . . nal Code. 

more important subject, — the framing of a Criminal Code. 
Commissioners, appointed for this purpose at his instigation, 
had performed their work in a very rude fashion, and he, 
turning their Eeport into a Bill, pressed that it should at 
once be passed into a law. He had some countenance from 
Lord St. Leonards, now an ex-Chancellor, who from being a 
legal oi^timist had suddenly become an ardent reformer, and, 
to gain popularity for his party, was willing to join in an 
experiment which would have thrown the administration of 
criminal justice into utter confusion. But we succeeded in 
obtaining a Select Committee upon the Bill, and a reference 
upon it to the Judges, who, with entire unanimity, con- 
demned the proposed Code, and i)ointcd out the fatal consc- 

2 p 2 



580 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

^?Y ^' quences wliicli many of its enactments would have produced. 
, Brougliam was highly incensed, and wrote with his own pen 

A.D. 1854. two articles upon the subject in vituperation of the Judges, 
one of which he got inserted in the ' Edinburgh Keview/ and 
the other in the ' Quarterly.' He then, in repeated speeches 
delivered in the House of Lords and in the Law Amendment 
Society, asserted that public opinion was entirely with liim, 
vouching for proof that the two great antagonistic Keviews 
for once agreed, which shewed that " all parties were against 
the narrow-minded opponents of codification." * 

In 1854, when England was '^ drifting " into the Eussian 
war, I thought Brougham would have been roused to some 
great oratorical efforts — particularly as Lyndhurst, who used 
to excite his jealousy and envy in debate, had gained immense 
applause by very remarkable speeches he had delivered on 
the aggressive policy of Kussia and the timid policy of Aus- 
tria and Prussia. But Brougham would not commit himself 
by joining either the bellicose or the pacific, — pretty much 
imitating the course taken by the Prime Minister, whom he 
was inclined to patronise. Although speaking almost every 
night, he allowed the session to close in August without 
leaving anything interesting to record, — his constant topics 
still being the excessive costs of proceedings in the County 
Courts, and the desideratum in our juridical system — " Courts 
of Reconciliation." 
Meeting In October, 1854, when returning from a tour in Germany, 

Bnmo-ham ^ ^^^^ ^'^ ^^ Paris, on his way to Cannes, and I spent a week 
in Paiis, ^yith him most agreeably. We were together at Marechal 

Oct , 1854. . . 

St. Arnaud's funeral, and he very obligingly carried me to 

* While fully aware of tlie impossibility of reducing the whole law of any 
civilized country into a written code in which might be found all that judges 
or legal practitioners can require for the due administration of justice, so that 
all other law-books might be dispensed with and burned, I was in hopes that 
the ciiminal law, from its simplicity and certainty, was a partial exception ; 
but having sat for eleven days with one Chancellor and four ex-Chancellors, 
Cranworth, T^yndhurst, Brougham, Truro, and St. Leonards, upon the single 
title of " homicide," I gave up the attempt in desptiir. We never could agree 
ou a definition of murder or manslaughter. Ih-ougliam himself was particu- 
larly unhandy at this work, and justified tiie answer given by Maule, J., to the 
question whether the attempt could now Ir^ safely made :— " I think the attempt 
would now be i)aitieulaily dangerous, for the seheme is impracticable, and 
there are some who believe that tJiey could easily accomplish it." 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAIM. 581 

the meetings of the Institute, and introduced me to his literary CHAP, 
and scientific confrh^es. ' 

We were then in hopes of speedily hearing of the capture a.d. 1854. 
of Sebastopol, although the first intelligence of this event, Conductor 
which had caused such joy, had turned out to be a hoax. 
Brougham was particularly sanguine, from having been made 
the depositary of Lord Dundonald's secret for taking the 
strongest places in the world by projectiles assailing the 
sense of smell. This he had studied and communicated to 
the Duke of Wellinorton, and the succeedins: authorities at 
the Horse Guards — and he himself had entire confidence in 
its efficacy. But, alas ! the works to defend Sebastopol were 
raised with more energy and skill than those to attack it ; 
when Christmas arrived the English army in the Crimea, by 
mismanagement at home and abroad, had almost melted 
away, and notwithstanding the glories of the Alma and of 
Inkerman an appalling dread was entertained of some un- 
exampled national calamity. 

Lord Aberdeen was forced to resio^n, and beino; speedily P'^imerston 

J. . . Prime Mi- 

followed by all his Peelite associates, a Whig ministry w^as nister. 
reconstructed with Palmerston at the head of it. a.d. i855. 

Brougham had been involved in the most serious personal 
differences with Palmerston. For years he had bitterly •- 

assailed the policy of the Whig Foreign Minister, and in 
moving a vote of thanks to Lord Ashburton for concluding 
the treaty with America under Sir Kobert Peel, he embraced 
the opportunity of showing up the alleged unfitness and 
blunders of " the man who had done his best to embroil us 
with all the states in the old world and in the new." 

Nevertheless no sooner was Palmerston installed than, Brons^ham 
recollecting Brougham's passion for protecting a minister, he tKew^Go- 
opened a communication with him, and — not offering him a ^emment. 
place, but, what was perhaps more agreeable, expressing a 
deep sense of his great influence in the House of Lords, in 
the country at large, and all over Europe — asked whether ho 
might not hope for his support in the unprecedentedly dillicult 
position in which unforeseen circumstances had placed him. 
There was immediately an entente cordiale between them. 
More suo Brougliani conthiued to sit on the Op[)ositiou benches, 



582 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

^ix^* ^^*' professing perfect political impartiality, and occasionally 
, criticising the measures of Government so as to maintain his 



A.D. 1855. character for independence, during the whole of the session 
of 1855 he played a part which was very agreeable to the 
new Government. Still he made no great speeches, and his 
nightly topic was "the heavy tax imposed on suitors in the 
county courts by the fees exacted from them to pay the 
salaries of the judges." 

He continued unaccountably to submit to the drudgery of 
hearing appeals in the House of Lords. The occupation 
yielded him neither profit, nor fame, nor amusement, and as 
I believe he had at last abandoned all notion of again holding 
the Great Seal, he could no longer be actuated by the wish 
to retain his acquaintance with juridical proceedings as a 
Attack upon qualification for office. Unfortunately he, with Lords Cran- 
kt^em^i' worth and St. Leonards, contrived to get the appellate 
diction of jurisdiction of the House into still greater discredit, and at 
the end of the session Bethell, the Solicitor General, brought 
the matter before the House of Commons, asserting that 
"judicial business was conducted before the Supreme Court 
of Appeal in a manner which would disgrace the lowest court 
of justice in the kingdom." Brougham had left London for 
Brougham Hall — in his phrase had ^' jprorogued himself " — 
before this explosion, or he would have paid off Mr. Solicitor 
with usury. According to his annual migration he took 
wing for Cannes in October, " biding his time " at the 
opening of another session. 
Parke made Before this Came round, a storm was raised by a heedless 
life. step of the Government which involved us all in its vortex. 

Oranworth, without consulting any one who could keep him 
straight, thought that his best course would be to have two 
new peers who would outvote, if not outweigh, St. Leonards, 
and make him independent of Brougham. One of these was 
Lushington, Chancellor of the Diocese of London, and Judge 
of the Court of Admiralty ; but who, having a large family 
and small means, could not accept an hereditary peerage. 
A life peerage being proposed, he said he could not stand the 
obloquy of being the first peer for life, but he would not mind 
following in the wake of another. Baron Parke was fixed 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 583 

Upon for the experiment, and in an evil hour he consented ^^^^' 
to its being made upon him. Brougham was still at Cannes, ' 

but he appeared in the House a few days after the opening a.d. 1856. 
of the session, and he resisted the claim of Baron Wensley- 
dale to sit in Parliament with great zeal and with great Brougham^s 
talent, distinguishing himself more as a debater than he had Jjon tT^ife 
done for several years past. On Lord Lyndhurst's motion to peerages, 
refer the patent to a committee of privileges he spoke shortly 
and admirably ; and in the committee he delivered a most 
excellent argument, which he published in a pamphlet, 
encountering with skill and force the authority of Lord Coke, 
which was strong against us. Our triumph was complete, 
the Lords having, by a large majority, *' ordered and adjudged 
that neither the patent, nor the writ of summons under it, 
conferred any right to sit as a peer." 

But a considerable mortification followed to Brougham, Violent at- 
which is not yet by any means at an end. He has taken a Brougham 
part in hearing appeals in the House of Lords above a quarter ^^ ^^1 ^J'P^^' 
of a century, and he fondly hoped that his performance of 
this character would afford one of the many grounds on 
which he must enjoy a brilhant and lasting reputation with 
posterity ; but a select committee having been appointed, on 
the motion of Lord Derby, to consider whether any and what 
change in the exercise of the appellate jurisdiction of the 
House is required, grave complaints have been brought 
forward against his demeanour in hearing appeals, and against 
various judgments he has delivered. On the adjournment 
for the Easter holidays he set off in high dudgeon for Cannes, 
and there he still remains, nursing his wrath.* I have 
received two long letters from liim inveighing against those 
who have offended him, advocating the old system, and 
expressing his reprobation of the proposed remedy of intro- 
ducing a Scotch lawyer as a member of the appeal tribunal. 

Having thus told all I know that is memorable of him Farewell for 
from liis birth to the present hour I must here pause, and *l!® piesont 

, ^ of my ' Lite 

this may be the conclusion of my memoir. Although he is of Lord 
a year older tlian I am he may very probably survive me, 

* Written 13lb of Apiil, 185G.— Eu. 



Broil diam.' 



584 ^ EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTOKIA. 

CHAP, and I shall not resume it unless I survive him. In that 
^__^J_^ event I should like to trace him to his last abode, and try to 
A.D. 1856. wind up with an impartial estimate of his character and 
career. At present I recollect nothing omitted by me which 
can be supposed to do him honour, except that he has lately 
published an edition of * Newton's Principia ' in conjunction 
with a Cambridge mathematician ; that he has favoured the 
world with a selection, in three volumes, of his essays in the 
* Edinburgh Keview ' (omitting, however, the most famous of 
them, his criticism on Byron, which elicited the poem 
of ^ English Bards and Scotch Keviewers ') ; and that he is 
carrying through the press a new edition of all his works, 
oratorical, political, critical, philosophical, historical, bio- 
graphical, and miscellaneous (in how many volumes it is not 
yet stated). It is rumoured that he is likewise employed 
upon an autobiogkaphy. I hope, most sincerely, that this 
is true. From his failure as a novelist in ' Albert Lunel ' * 
I doubt whether he possesses the tact of presenting an 
individual personally before the readers of a book, bringing 
them acquainted with him, and making them take a sympa- 
thetic interest in his progress and adventures. But he 
knows a great deal which, if disclosed, would be found most 
valuable, and I should be delighted with the opportunity of 
comparing his own with my statement of his acts, his wishes, 
and his motives. 



From 13th ISth April, 1859. — It is exactly three years since I con- 
t''i3th^^^' eluded my Memoir of Lord Brougham. We both survive ; but 
Apii], 1859. in the meantime nothing remarkable has happened to either 
of us. While I have been carried along as Chief Justice by 
the regular revolution of Term, Sittings, Circuit, and Vacation, 
he has oscillated between Provence and England, delivering 
a lecture to the Institute as he passes through Paris, and 
making tiresome speeches on Law Eeform in the House of 
Lords. He gave a general support to Lord Palmerston's 
Government, notwithstanding former quarrels, but he seldom 
spoke on foreign politics. 

* * Albert Luncl, or the Chateau of Languedoc,' published in 18-44. 



LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 585 

In the year 1856 he retired to Brougham Hall several CHAP. 
weeks before the end of the Session, and thence, when I was ' 



libelled so shamefully after Pahner's famous trial for poison- a.d. 1856. 
ing, he addressed the following letter to me : — 

" Brougham, 11th June, 1856. 

" My deaPw C. J., — I have of late been reflecting on Denman's 
great alarm about the threatened inroad of Lyncb law. He 
no doTibt regarded the press as the road for that invasion ; 
and I have had my attention drawn to the subject by the inter- 
ference of the press with Palmer's case. No doubt it is after and 
not before the judgment, and this is a great mitigation ; but still it 
somewhat affects the ultimate dealing with the particular case, 
and greatly affects judges and juries as to future cases. T need 
hardly say that if all judges were as much to be relied on as you, 
little harm would be done. But I could name others who would be 
much affected by the attacks, which I see wnth a disgust I have 
no words to describe, upon your late admirable conduct of the 
trial. I assure you I have read those attacks with feelings of 
general reprobation quite independent of those which my personal 
regard for you so naturally inspire. I refer particularly to a 
jDamphlet in the name of the man's brother (a clergyman), and 
which I have read copied into the dail}^ papers. It clearly is 
not written by the clergyman, but by some lawyer or half-lawyer, 
and I am very clear that if it either proceeds from or is counte- 
nanced by any of the counsel in the cause (which I cannot believe 
jDOs.sible), it is as great an outrage as I have ever known in the 
profession. At the same time, miich as one feels the evil of these 
things, one cannot easily check them while full and free dis- 
cussion of public conduct, including judicial, is allowed — as 
allowed it ever must needs be. 

" If you have seen the foul matter, you certainly have despised 
it even more than I do. If you have not, there is no harm in 
3'our being aware how heartily I both despise and abominate it. 
There might even have been some talent shown in it, reminding 
us of your predecessor's rule as to never convicting where the 
body is not found, and extending this generally to Corpus delicti 
But no such skill appears, only violence and scurrility, excusable 
in a brother perhaps, not in any professional ally. 

" Yours ever, 

" 11. B. 

*' I am getting so slowly round that I can hardl}' say I mend 
at all." 



58^ REIGN OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

CHAP. I think the Attorney General would have done Avell if he 
, had prosecuted, as there ought to be some limit to the 

A.D. 1856. invectives against public functionaries when corruption is 
imputed to them, but I would not stir in the matter, for 
vituperation gives me no uneasiness, and it can do me little 
damage in public estimation to compare me to Jeffereys and 
Scroggs. 

From his retirement at Brougham Hall, Brougham also 
wrote to me the following letter in reference to the bill 
which the Lords had passed, and which was then pending in 
the Commons, empowering the Crown to create a limited 
number of peers for life, with a view to the judicial business 
of the Upper House : — 

"Brougham, 14tli July, 1856. 

"My dear C. J., — I feel with you how very awkward the 
condition of the House of Lords is. In truth, the folly of Derby in 
advertizing the inadequacy of the appellate Judicature has been 
the cause of all the evil, or nearly all. The Parke peerage began 
it, but there was no occasion for what followed, because I am con- 
fident that had they given an hereditary peerage immediately 
after our decision, and had St. Leonards agreed to give up eternal 
disputation (he has really been the main cause of the clamour), 
we might have gone on as before. The vacation will produce 
some calmer discussion, and it wall then be seen how little ground 
there has been for the main charges against the House of Lords. 

As for anything being done now — I mean this session 

• — it is hopeless. I should have made an effort to attend had 
there been the least possibility of anything. But I have been only 
very slowly getting round, and I am positively forbidden to go 
back to business 

"You will see, apropos of Ljmch law and United States abomi- 
nations, in the next ' Law Eeview,' a full — or at least a siifficient 
— exposure of the attacks I formerly wrote to you about, and an 
introductory view of the necessity of making those who attack 
courts do it in their own name, that it may bo seen if they are 
angry counsel, attorneys, or parties. 

" Yours ever, 

" H. Brougham." 

He had condemned this bill, and every plan proposed for 
improving the appellate jurisdiction of our court of dernier 
ressort, — thinking it perfect while he sat in it. 



LIFE OF LOED BROUGHAM. 587 

I am now glad tliat the bill was rejected by tbe Commons, CHAP, 
for althougli the jadicial business in the Lords was for some _^_1__ 



time longer conducted in a very unsatisfactory manner, yet a.d. 1856. 
since Brougham has almost entirely ceased to attend to it, 
and Pemberton Leigh has been created a peer under the title 
of Lord Kingsdown, public confidence in this tribunal has 
been restored, and I hope that (Cairns, the new Solicitor 
General, becoming Chancellor) it may long be entitled to 
public confidence. 

Having retreated to Hartrigge in the autumn, I invited 
Brougham to visit me there to meet Philpotts, Bishop of 
Exeter, whom he abused so terribly in his famous speech 
against the Durham clergy, but with whom, as well as John 
Wilson Croker, and almost all his former Tory antagonists, 
he had long been reconciled. I received the following 
courteous answer : — 

" Brougham, 21st August, 1856. 

" My dear C. J., — Many thanks for your kind letter and 
hospitable invitation, which, I am sorry to say, I cannot avail 
myself of, as I am here in expectation of what the newspapers 
call a succession of visitors, beginning next week early, and 
continuing I cannot now tell how long, because some are from 
the other side of the Channel. 

" I assure you I should have greatly relished an excursion to 
your quarter, and had rather have met the Bishop, an old North 
circuit friend, and a most agreeable companion, than even the 
Judges of Scotch Assize. 

" But I should still more have desired a free conference with 
you on House of Lords, and the endless blunders committed 
there ; and I would fain hope that we still may meet before my 

southern flight 

" Yours ever, 

"H. B. 

"Kind regards to Lady S., but we really have a right to com- 
plain of these constant passings by us." 

In the course of this year his popularity was much in- 
creased. There issued from the press a ponderous volume 
entitled 'Lord Brougham's Acts,' with panegyrical notes 
from the pen of the Editor, Sir Eardlcy VVilmot. In this 
were contained all my Acts for the xVmendment of the Law 



588 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

^HAP. of Eeal Property, and all Lord Tenterden's Acts, and almost 
' all the Law Eeform Acts passed for the last thirty years. 

A.D. 1856. One man reclaimed a portion of the stolen goods — asserting 
himself to be the author of the bill for permitting parties in 
a civil cause to be witnesses — but the rest of the body plun- 
dered remained quiescent, and the newspapers placed 
Brougham as a law-giver above Solon, Justinian, or Napoleon 
the Great. This volume was dedicated to Brougham himself 
— with his *' kind permission " — but let us hope that when 
he kindly gave the permission he was unacquainted with its 
contents. 

For years he had been President of the Law Amendment 
Society — which he worked as a literary engine by its organ 
the ' Law Eeview.' This Society being comparatively ob- 
scure, he panted for a wider field of usefulness, and was 
gratified by the establishment of the Social Science Society, 
which embraced among its members Lord John Eussell and 
many other distinguished politicians and authors ; which was 
divided into sections for the consideration of all subjects 
connected with social improvement, comprehending juris- 
prudence ; and which was to hold aggregate meetings once a 
year in some great provincial town for lectures and debates. 

A.D. 1857 The first meeting was at Birmingham, and here Brougham 
acquired immense renown. Like Bottom in 'Midsummer 
Night's Dream,' he was eager to play all the parts himself. 
He assigned the Law of Bankruptcy to Lord John Eussell, 
but he retained for himself National Education, the Abolition 
of Slavery, the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and the 
Advancement of Science. For a week together he extem- 
porised on these topics to crowded and admiring audiences, 
and at this dead season of the year the editors of all the 
newspapers in the kingdom were delighted to fill their 
columns with his harangues. 

These exercitations and plaudits had a very salutary effect 
both on his mind and body. From the languor of rural life 
he had fallen into a state of deep depression, and his family 
were most seriously alarmed. Several common friends who 
came to me from visiting him at Brougham Hall declared 
that ho never appeared till dinner was announced ; that he 



LIFE OF LORD BEOUGHAM. 589 

sat silent at table, hardly tasting any food, and that he left CHAP. 
them abruptly before the ladies had withdrawn. When I ' 



returned to London in the beginning of November, I found 
him in high health and spirits — delighted with his sociolo- 
gical achievements. 

The following year (1858) the Society met at Liverpool, a.d. 1858. 
and President Brougham again, for a week, pleased himself 
and the multitude as much as before — again having Lord 
John Eussell to play second fiddle to him. 

In the autumn of this year Brougham likewise obtained 
prodigious newspaper applause for an oration he delivered 
on Newton at the inauguration of a statue of the great 
philosopher erected at the place of his birth. I really 
believe that the oration was very well prepared for the 
occasion, although it can have no permanent interest. 

.The generation of journalists whom Brougham, when 
Chancellor, flattered and disappointed, and who long had their 
revenge upon him by systematically extenuating his merits 
and exaggerating his faults, has passed away, and the public 
are now disposed to give credit to his own assertions re- 
specting himself — that he has ever been consistent in his 
principles and disinterested in his conduct, and that since he 
resigned the Great Seal, never wishing to engage in party 
strife, he has patriotically devoted himself to the improve- 
ment of our laws and institutions. If he were to die while 
this impression remains upon the public mind, I should not 
be surprised if he were to be buried in Westminster Abbey, 
the two Houses of Parliament attending his funeral. 

When Parliament met in the beginning of February in a.d, 1859. 
the present year (1859) Brougham, as usual, came from 
Cannes to be present, and he made several judicious and 
useful speeches upon the wickedness of France and Austria 
in going to war without any casus helli, and on the importance 
of the entente cordiale between ICngland and France being 
l)reserved. To show his impartiality, he lavished his advice 
both ui)on the opposition and the ministers. lie strongly 
reiuonstratod with Lord Palmerston and Lord Clarciidou 
against thoir visit to the Emperor Louis Napoleon at Com- 
picgue, and he pointed out to Lord Malmesbury, the Foreign 



590 EEIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

^^^^' Secretary, how tlie negotiations should be conducted with the 
' continental powers for the preservation of peace. He was 
A.D. 1859. disposed to take Lord Derby's Government under his pro- 
tection ; but, his suggestions not being very submissively 
received, and tired of hearing appeals in the House of Lords, 
where Lord Kingsdown's opinion now always prevails, about 
the middle of March he suddenly started for his chateau in 
Provence, where he now is. He intimated his intention to 
return to London immediately after Easter, but if he should 
do so he will find that Parliament has been dissolved, and 
that the energies of the nation are absorbed in a general 
election. Before he went he declared himself very emphati- 
cally to be against any further organic change in our repre- 
sentative system, and I think he may be considered the 
leader of the anti-reformers ; for the present ministers, 
although Tories in their hearts, being so weak, dare not 
venture to profess or to act upon Tory principles. 

I here stop for the present. My memoir cannot be con- 
sidered complete without some further account of his writings ; 
an estimate of his character ; and a survey of the influence 
he has exercised upon the times in which he lived. 



POSTSCRIPT. ^91, 



POSTSCEIPT BY THE EDITOK. 

The summary of Lord Brougham's character which my 
father had intended to add was never written. I find only a 
few scattered memoranda in his handwriting of the heads 
under which it was probably to be divided, as : — " Mental 
qualities : vigour, elasticity, activity of mind, memory, power 
of application, power of reasoning." " Moral qualities : 
amiable in private life, good brother, fond father, obliging, 
jealous. Euin of Brougham : his insatiable appetite for 
present applause, desire to astonish, and to obtain credit 
for more learning, knowledge, and talent, than he possessed." 
"Literature." "Authorship." "Education, Slavery, and 
Charities." " His character as Speaker of the House of 
Lords." "His judgments." "His marriage; — death of his 
daughter." " His friendships : Jeffrey, Horner, Sydney Smith, 
Mackintosh — all broken — Komilly an exception — and Den- 
man." One memorandum refers to a " character of Brougham 
in the * Life of Eomilly.' " The following is the passage 

alluded to : — " March 20, 1816 Brougham is a man 

of the most splendid talents and the most extensive acquire- 
ments, and he has used the ample means which he possesses 
most usefully for mankind. It would be difficult to overrate 
the services which he has rendered the cause of the slaves 
in the West Indies, or that of the friends to the extension of 
knowledge and education among the poor, or to praise too 
highly his endeavours to serve the oppressed inliabitants 
of Pohmd. How much is it to be lamented that his want of 
judgment and of prudence should prevent his great talents, 
and such good intentions, from being as great a blessing to 
mankind as they ought to be." * 

* 'Life of Romilly,' vol, iii., p. 237. In a codicil to Sir S. Roniilly's will, 
dated October, 1818 (to which also one of my father's memoranda refers), 
after leaving his papers on Criminal Law to Mr. Whishaw, he adds: "If it 
were not to suit him to undertake such a task, jjcrhaps my friend Mr. 
Brougham, who finds time for anything that has a tendency to the advance- 
ment of human happiness, would be able, notwithataudiug his numeroua 
ccoiipations, to perform this office of friendship." 



592 POSTSCEIPT. 

Lord Brougliam's life was prolonged for nine years from 
the date at which this Memoir stops, a few weeks after which 
my father was himself appointed Chancellor. During the 
two years that he held the Great Seal perfect peace and 
amity reigned between him and Lord Brougham, and they 
were sitting together hearing appeals in the House of Lords 
on the last day on which my father presided there, and the 
last but one of his life — Friday, the 21st of June, 1861. This 
was alluded to by Lord Brougham in a speech which he 
made on the Monday following in the House of Lords, warmly 
bearing his testimony to "the great judicial talents " of his 
noble and learned friend who had so suddenly been removed 
from the midst of them. 

During his remaining years Lord Brougham retired more 
and more from political strife, and devoted his energy and 
activity to the Association for the Promotion of Social Science. 
He was elected President at the annual meetino-s of this 
Society which were held successively at Glasgow, Dublin, 
London, Edinburgh, York, and Sheffield, and at all these 
places he delivered long addresses. His strength, however, 
was gradually declining, and the last gathering of the Asso- 
ciation which he attended was at Manchester, in 1866. 

He continued his practice of migrating for a part of every 
year to Cannes. He spent his last winter at his favourite 
Chateau Eleanor Louise, and there he died on the 7th of 
May, 1868, in his 90th year, 



( 593 ) 



APPENDIX 



CHAPTEE III. OF THE LIFE OF LOED BEOUGHAM. 



August, 1857. — Since writing the above account of Queen 
Caroline's proceedings on her return to England, I have 
been favoured by the Dowager Lady Truro with a perusal of 
the originals of the following correspondence between the 
Queen and George IV. respecting her IMajesty's name being 
inserted in the Liturgy, and her presence at the King's 
Drawing-room and at his Coronation. The original letters 
came into the possession of Lord Truro as one of her Majesty's 
Executors. The draughts of the Queen's letters are in the 
Queen's own handwriting, and seem to be her own com- 
position from the bad spelling and ungrammatical English, 
but they were no doubt afterwards corrected by her counsel 
or other advisers. 

TJie Queen to Lord Liverpool. 

" Brandenbiirgh House, 18th of Marcl), 1S21. 
"■ The Queen Communicates to Lord Liverpool that in Conse- 
quence that Qneen has not Eeceived any answer relatif to her last 
letter, which she wrote on the 3th of March, the Queen Eeqriests 
Lord Liverpool to informe his Majesty the King that the Queens 
intentions is to present herself in Person at the Kings Drawing 
room to have the opportunity of Presenting a Petition of obtaining 
her Eights that the Queens Name should be Eestoied to tlie 
Liturgy as her Predecessors. 

"C^arolixeE." 

Lord Liverpool to the Queen. 

"Fife House, 10th Marcli, 1821. 

" Lord Livei-pool has the honour to inform the Queen that the 
letter which ho received on the 3rd inst. was immediately laid 
before the King; but as His Majesty saw no reason for altering 
his determination upon the principal question of Iho Liturgy 

VOL. VIII. 2 Q 



594 APPENDIX. 

referred to in it, and as the Queen concluded Her letter by 
saying that ' She submitted Herself entirely to His Majesty's de- 
cision,' the King did not consider any answer to be requisite. 

" Lord Liverpool is now commanded to state that the King 
must decline receiving the Queen at His Drawing-room ; but he 
will be ready to receive any Petition or llepresentation the Queen 
may be desirous of bringing before Him, through Lord Liver- 
pool, or through the Secretary of State." 

The Queen to Lord Liverpool. 

" Brandenbm-gh House, the 19tli of March, 1821. 

" The Queen is much Surprised at the Contents of Lord Liver- 
pool letter and is anxious to know from Lord Liverpool if his 
Majesty has Commanded him to forbid the Queen from appearing 
at his Drawing Eoom, or merely to prevent her Majesty pre- 
senting Her Petition in Person to the King. 

" The Eestoration of the Queens name to the Liturgy being 
first and only favor the Queen had ever Solicited from his Ma- 
jesty, she trusts he will be graciously pleased to acquiesce in, and 
she most Ernestly Prays his Majesty to grant. 

« Caroline E." 

Lord Liverpool to the Queen. 

"Fife House, 20tli March, 1821. 

" Lord Liverpool has the honour to acknowledge the receipt of 
the Queen's letter of the 19th inst., and as the Queen puts to him 
■ the question ' Whether His Majesty has commanded Lord Liver- 
pool to forbid the Queen from appearing at His Drawing Eoom, 
or merely to prevent Her Majesty from presenting her Petition 
in person to the King ' — Lord Liverpool is under the necessity 
of stating that, the King having the clear and undoubted right to 
regulate his own Drawing Eoom in such manner as He may think 
proper, His Majesty feels it impossible, under all the circum- 
stances, to permit the Queen to be present at it ; and Lord Liver 
pool begs farther to add that the King will be ready to receive 
any communications the Queen may have to lay before Him, as 
heretofore, through the channel of His Government. 

" Lord Liverpool will feel it his duty to lay the Queen's letter 
of yesterday before the King ; but after the determination of His 
Majesty, so repeatedly and recently announced, on the question 
of the Liturgy, Lord Liverpool cannot hold out an}^ expectafcions 
to the Queen that His Majesty's decision on this subject will un- 
dergo any alteration." 



APPES-DIX. 595 

Lard Liverpool to the Queen. 

'■• Fife House, Marcli 21st, 1821. 

" Lord Livei'pool has tlie honour to acknowledge the receipt of 
the Queen's note of this day, together with a sealed Petition 
addressed to the King. 

"Lord Liverpool has obeyed the Queen's commands in for- 
warding the Petition immediately to the King." 

Lord Liverpool to the Queen. 

" Fife House, March 23rd, 1821. 

" Lord Liverpool has received the King's ^commands to acknow- 
ledge the receipt of the Queen's Petition. 

" His Majesty has commanded Lord Liverpool to inform the 
Queen, in answer to it, that the decision of the question of the 
Liturgy in the month of February of last year was not taken by 
His Majesty without the fullest consideration ; and the King 
regrets to be under the necessity of adding that nothing has since 
occurred which can induce His Majesty to depart from the de- 
cision then adopted." 

The Queen to the King. 

" Sunday, 29th April, 1821. 

" The Queen from Circumstances being obliged to remain in 
England, Her Majesty requests the King will be pleased to Com- 
mand those ladies of the first Piank His Majesty may think the 
most proper in this Eealms to attend the Queen on the day of 
the Coronation, which Her Majesty is informed is now fixed, and 
also to Name those Ladies which will be required to bear Her 
Majesty's train on that day. 

"The Queen being particular!}' anxious to submitt to the good 
Taste of His Majesty most earnestly entreats the King to informe 
the Queen in what dress His Majesty wishes the Queen to appear 
in on that day of the coronation. 

" Caroline E." 

TJie Qu£en to Lord Liverpool. 

" IJrandenburgh House, May 5tl', 1821. 
" The Queen is much Surprised at Lord Livei-pool's answer, 
and assures the Earle that the Queen is determined to attend at 
the Coronation, Her Majesty considering it as one of Her Eights 
and Priveledges which the Queen is resolved ever to Maintain. 

" The Queen requests Lord Liverpool to Communicate the above 
to His Majesty." 



596 APPENDIX. 

" Whitehall, July 13th. 
" Madam, — I have laid before the King your Majesty's letter to 
me of the 11 th of this month, which states that your Majesty con- 
siders it necessary to inform me that it is your Majesty's inten- 
tion to be present at the 19th, the day fixed for His Majesty's 
Coronation, and you therefore demand that a suitable place may 
be appropriated for your Majesty ; and I am commanded by the 
King to refer your Majesty to the Earl of Liverpool's letter of 
the 7th of May last, and to acquaint your Majesty that it is not 
His Majesty's pleasure to comply with the application contained 
in your Majesty's letter."* 

* Lord Liverpool's letters are all in his own handwriting ; but this, which I 
presume is from the Lord Chamberlain, is a copy in the handwriting of Queen 
Caroline, and the signature is omitted. 



THE END. 



LONDON* . PRINTED BT WTI-LIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STBEIT, 
AND CHARING CROSS. 



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